What the Vancouver Process adds to the existing climate policy landscape
A growing number of international initiatives are helping CDR through scientific assessment, innovation, market development, project deployment, investment mobilization, capacity-building, and diplomatic engagement. These efforts are essential and have helped lay the foundation for future CDR deployment.
The Vancouver Process builds on this work by focusing on a different but equally important question: how can governments prepare themselves to coordinate, govern, finance, and operationalize carbon management systems over the decades ahead?
As countries move from discussing CDR to deploying it at scale, they face a growing set of practical challenges: developing regulatory frameworks, establishing standards and MRV systems, coordinating infrastructure, designing procurement and finance mechanisms, building institutional capacity, engaging the public, and working across borders. While many organizations contribute important pieces of this puzzle, governments still have relatively few opportunities to compare approaches, learn from one another, and collaborate on these shared implementation challenges.
The Vancouver Process provides a neutral forum for governments, supported by researchers, civil society, industry, and other stakeholders, to explore these questions together. Rather than replacing existing institutions, it seeks to connect and strengthen them by helping governments translate knowledge, ambition, innovation, and investment into effective long-term policy and implementation.
In this sense, the Vancouver Process is not a treaty, funding mechanism, research program, or technology initiative. It is a long-term collaborative process focused on helping governments learn, coordinate, and act together as carbon dioxide removal evolves from a niche activity into a core component of global climate policy.
| Initiative | Primary Focus | Primary Function | What Vancouver Adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paris Agreement / NDCs | Climate commitments | Establishes national climate goals and reporting frameworks | Focuses on practical implementation, coordination, and policy learning related to CDR. |
| Article 6.4 Mechanism | Carbon markets | Creates rules for carbon crediting and international transfers | Provides a government coordination forum regardless of whether crediting mechanisms are used. |
| COP Process | Climate diplomacy | Negotiation, consensus-building, and political coordination | Supports sustained collaboration between governments outside formal negotiations. |
| Mission Innovation | Clean energy innovation | Accelerates research, development, demonstration, and deployment across multiple sectors | Focuses specifically on government readiness, governance, and long-term implementation of CDR. |
| Mission Innovation – CDR Mission | CDR innovation | Advances CDR RD&D, demonstrations, and early deployment | Extends beyond innovation into policy design, procurement, regulation, public administration, and international coordination. |
| Climate High-Level Champions | Climate ambition | Mobilizes non-state actors and political momentum | Focuses on operational collaboration among governments rather than political mobilization. |
| Carbon Management Challenge | Carbon management deployment | Accelerates carbon management projects, investment, and deployment pathways | Focuses on the public-sector institutions and frameworks needed to support deployment at scale. |
| UNEP | Policy support and capacity-building | Provides assessments, technical assistance, and convening support | Provides a dedicated government-to-government forum focused specifically on CDR governance and implementation. |
| IPCC | Scientific assessment | Assesses climate science, mitigation pathways, and removals | Focuses on translating scientific insights into practical government coordination and action. |
| CTCN (UN Climate Technology Centre & Network) | Technology assistance | Supports technology transfer and technical assistance projects | Focuses on policy alignment, governance, and peer-to-peer government learning rather than project implementation. |
| GONE (Group of Negative Emitters) | Political leadership on removals | Encourages countries to pursue negative emissions pathways and demonstrate ambition | Focuses on practical implementation challenges, institutional capacity, and government coordination across a broader range of countries and stakeholders. |
| Research and NGO Ecosystem | Analysis and advocacy | Produces research, recommendations, and technical expertise | Provides a government-led venue for applying and operationalizing these insights. |
| Vancouver Process | Government readiness and implementation | Supports peer-to-peer learning, coordination, and collaboration on CDR governance, policy, finance, and deployment | — |