Toby Janson-Smith
AFOLU Director
Verified Carbon Standard Association
Toby is the Agriculture, Forestry & Other Land Use (AFOLU) Director for the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). He led the establishment of the original VCS AFOLU framework six years ago, which has become the preeminent global carbon accounting standard for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), currently being used by more than a hundred projects worldwide. In addition, Toby oversees VCS’s groundbreaking Jurisdictional & Nested REDD+ (JNR) framework, which a growing number of national and state governments are applying to account for the emission reductions generated by their REDD policies and measures.
Previously, Toby led Conservation International’s Forest Carbon Markets program, securing some of the largest corporate REDD investments to date through partnerships with Disney, Marriott and Dell. Prior to that, Toby directed the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) – developer of the leading social and environmental standards for forest carbon projects and government programs.
On the forest carbon policy front, Toby developed legislative proposals adopted within various US climate bills and helped establish bilateral agreements between leading U.S., Brazilian, Indonesian and Mexican states. He also serves on the REDD Offsets Working Group, providing recommendations to the California Air Resources Board on how tropical forests could be brought into the state’s cap-and-trade scheme, and is a technical adviser to the Carbon Fund of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.
Toby authored the “Corporate Primer on REDD” (2013) and co-edited the book “Climate Change and Forests – Emerging Policy and Market Opportunities” published in 2010 by the Brookings Institute and Royal Institute of International Affairs. Toby holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of London and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Michigan.