A Game Plan for Funding Carbon Offsets: How perpetual bonds can make nature-based offsets a realistic strategy for dealing with climate change.

The article focuses on how perpetual bonds can provide a sustainable financial model for funding nature-based carbon offsets (NBOs) to address climate change. It explains that NBOs, such as forestation projects, typically have shorter durations than the long-lasting carbon emissions liabilities (E-liabilities) they aim to offset, requiring indefinite management commitments to be fully nettable. By issuing perpetual bonds and creating endowment funds, offset providers can secure ongoing capital to maintain these natural assets indefinitely, enabling the creation of liquid markets for carbon removal offsets. This approach may attract institutional investors with long-term liabilities, such as universities or churches, rather than typical for-profit businesses. The article illustrates this concept with a hypothetical example of an indigenous tribe using perpetual bonds to finance a forest managed in perpetuity to generate nettable carbon offsets.