Digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Technologies Supporting Carbon Credit-Generating Water Security Programs: State of the Art and Technology Roadmap

Abstract

The voluntary carbon market can become a productive mechanism for channeling performance-based financing toward both water security and climate adaptation and mitigation challenges. Typically, carbon credit methodologies support projects that directly avoid or remove emissions, including forest preservation and renewable energy generation. As such, emission avoidance or carbon sequestration monitoring can be conducted directly and in the same location as the projects. However, our analysis across five carbon credit-generating water subsectors identifies four novel monitoring parameters that, while critical for evaluating project impact and calculating carbon credits, are not direct measures of emission reductions, avoidance, or sequestration. We identify these novel parameters and explore how digital technologies can enhance monitoring, reporting, and verification of these parameters. We identify that microbial water quality and drinking water access can be monitored directly and reported remotely using sensor-based technologies, while irrigation management can be tracked using soil moisture sensors and satellite-based evapotranspiration data, while instream water quality can monitored using in situ sensors and land management models. Advancing these technology capabilities and improving data security, reliability, and accessibility can strengthen the credibility of water-sector carbon credit methodologies, ultimately promoting financially, programmatically, and climatically sustainable projects.