Dear Reader,

Welcome to our first newsletter of 2015, at the start of an extremely important year in climate negotiations as we collectively work to drive a meaningful, effective and integrated intergovernmental agreement in Paris this December.

As many of you will be aware, I hand over the leadership baton in February to Marion Verles, formerly Executive Director of Nexus Carbon for Development, so I will take the prerogative of introducing this newsletter for the last time to publicly say a few words of thanks and praise.

Firstly to Marion: thanks for taking on the role of CEO. I could not be more delighted that we were able to select someone so knowledgeable and deeply mission-driven to lead this great and much needed organization. Secondly to the team that she will lead and with whom I have had the genuine pleasure of working for almost five years: our people are an incredible asset to the Foundation’s work and to the global fight against climate change – dedicated, rigorous and driven by a collective desire to ensure that the impact of every dollar invested in climate and development is maximized. Thirdly to our Board and Technical Advisory Committee, who in most cases volunteer their expertise to support the Foundation. And finally to you, our stakeholders, who choose to use our standards, fund our work, define and adopt best practice.

The Gold Standard is a case study in collaboration across civil society and the public and private sectors to demonstrate what is possible in climate and development projects. Since I joined in 2010, we have quadrupled our project pipeline and certified more than 37.5m tonnes of CO2e, 94% of the total issuance of Gold Standard credits, delivering millions of dollars in social and environmental value. At the same time we have delivered on the mandate to apply our tools for amplifying impact into new areas: within carbon markets, we’ve created tools to increase the viability of community projects and household technologies and expanded into forests and agriculture; we’ve used our co-benefit expertise to develop a dedicated certification for water projects and we have examined how the Gold Standard approach can be applied at scale in Cities and across other areas of climate finance.

This month’s newsletter is a great showcase of the breadth of our work today. In it we highlight: the launch of our agriculture scope; the consultation process for our Cities framework; our advocacy activities at COP20 and the Cookstoves Summit; the latest from our Water Benefit Certification scheme; and milestones from our pioneering projects – the registration of the first project in Burkina Faso, the first credits issued in Rwanda and a day in the life of Proyecto Mirador in Honduras. Enjoy.

It has been a pleasure and an honour to work with you all and I look forward to that continuing when I take up my new role in April.

Many thanks,