Andy is a chartered forester with 30 years’ experience in the nature conservation, renewable energy and sustainable forestry sectors, and has worked in public, private and non-profit sectors. He is currently Head of Climate and Landscape in Soil Association’ subsidiary certification body. He leads a team providing global validation and verification services for nature markets and responsible sourcing due diligence. The team are the leading validation body in the UK Woodland and Peatland codes, having validated 620 projects covering over 50k hectares and forecast to remove or reduce 10.5 million t/CO2e over their lifetimes. They also provide third party assurance to EnTrade’s operation of its pilot Somerset and Bristol Avon catchment markets. Providing confidence to the Environmental Markets Board that their ‘Market Rules’ are being followed. They also provide third party assurance to EnTrade’s operation of its pilot Somerset and Bristol Avon catchment markets in. Providing confidence to the Environmental Markets Board that their ‘Market Rules’ are being followed.
Poet and activist Nikkie Giovanni once wrote: “Mistakes are a fact of life; it’s the response to the error that counts.”
That sentiment could serve as a mantra for a Conformity Assessment body (CAB) like Soil Association Certification. Our role is to audit, license, validate and verify - encouraging organisations to see the process not as a burden, but as an opportunity: a fresh perspective that highlights risk, uncovers weaknesses, and identifies paths for improvement.
We focus exclusively on sustainable land management and associated value chains, building on a long history in organic licensing and sustainable forest management. Today, we are increasingly engaged in the rapidly evolving nature markets in the UK and overseas - a space full of potential but also of questions waiting for answers.
At its core, what we provide is trust: the confidence that one party’s claims meet agreed standards so that another can act on them. But this raises the central question: what does “good enough” really mean?
Within a project assessment we have:
Qualitative criteria – those reflecting operational best practice- are relatively straightforward. Perfection is impossible, but errors can be identified, assessed, corrected, monitored and mitigated. These “mistakes” become opportunities for learning and the driving force for improvement.
Quantitative criteria, however, are far more demanding. Here, the “units of sale” require accuracy and precision, because value literally rests on them.
In nature market codes and programmes:
We strive to improve quantification methodologies, knowing that in nature nothing is ever perfectly predictable. Ecosystem services are fundamentally complex and uncertain. Scrutiny comes from all sides: buyers demand proof of value, developers need results and society expects reliable outcomes. To address this, methodologies often include conservative accounting metrics to prevent over-crediting and buffers - an inbuilt insurance against reversals. But does this safeguard integrity, or compromise it?
Our accreditation to ISO 17029/14065 expects the best estimate, meaning that an assertion derived from a conservative and buffered metric leads to a verification statement which may not achieve a “reasonable level of assurance”, only a “limited” one. The level of assurance also sets out the extent of the assessment activities, meaning a “limited” level can be a more achievable and practical approach. Does this compromise integrity? Should the role of buffers be taken by insurance? In some cases, buffers themselves have been insured.
We often hear the warning: “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good”. Yet in the case of certain historical REDD+ projects, the methodology was imperfect, market actors gained advantage and the consequences reverberated globally. Perhaps the mistake was not imperfection itself, but the failure to review and improve methods quickly enough?
And so here we are UK 2025: the Corry review, consultations on BNG and the nature markets followed by the call for evidence, asking lots of the right questions. We have reached the piloting phase for the BSI Nature Investment Standards, beginning to define expectations. There seemed to be a clear consensus at the excellent Freeth’s event at the Royal Society, suggesting the message to government has been consistent – that legislation is required. It needs to both stimulate demand and implement a robust architecture for market operation, which defines expectations for the anomalies I’ve outlined, and protects from the risks which impacted the global VCM.
For me, high integrity lies within transparency, independent governance, and continuous improvement – and in embracing errors not as failures, but as essential steps toward progress.
Andy Grundy (LinkedIn)
Head of Climate and Landscape, Soil Association Certification (LinkedIn)
October 2025
