Hey! Thanks for your reply. I agree, people who quote Hayek would not likely argue for more regulation (though for the record neither of us at Ground Truth are libertarians—we can see the merit of an idea outside of the context of who comes up with it).
I have one idea for a power outside of government: the public. Consumers. Investors. What if there was a great popular movement to see concrete evidence of project activities and impacts?
The one that really leaped out at us was the lack of openly available data regarding nature-based solutions—particularly planting trees.
Ground Truth is a two-man operation of former Canadian reforestation/afforestation contractors. Our clients usually demanded precise breakdowns of exact number of trees going into each site, species breakdown, etc. Monitoring of survival is equally rigorous.
A lot of projects around the world for carbon sequestration or habitat restoration are doing a great job of trying to be transparent, but for the most part we see no such evidence in planting projects. Mainly just grand claims.
In our minds, what’s needed for the world to take these kinds of solutions seriously is a demonstration of rigorous accounting, to avoid accusations of double-counting, greenwashing etc.