Carbon credits were devised as a mechanism to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating a market in which companies can trade in emissions permits. Under the system, companies get a set number of carbon credits, which decline over time. They can sell any excess to another company.

Carbon credits create a monetary incentive for companies to reduce their carbon emissions. Those that cannot easily reduce emissions can still operate but at a higher financial cost. Proponents of the carbon credit system say that it leads to measurable, verifiable emission reductions. Credits have also led to the need for carbon accounting to guide companies, governments, and individuals in measuring their impacts.

Carbon credits are most often created through agricultural or forestry practices, although a credit can be made by nearly any project that reduces, avoids, destroys or captures emissions. Individuals or companies looking to offset their own greenhouse gas emissions can buy those credits through a middleman or those directly capturing the carbon. In the case of a farmer that plants trees, the landowner gets money; the corporation pays to offset their emissions; and the middleman, if there is one, can earn a profit along the way. But this only goes for what is called the “voluntary market.” There is also something called the involuntary or “compliance market.”

In the compliance market, or involuntary market, governments set a cap on how many tons of emissions certain sectors — oil, transportation, energy or waste management — can release.

If an oil company, for example, goes over the prescribed emissions limit, it must buy or use saved credits to stay under the emissions cap. If a company stays under that cap, it can save or sell those credits. This is known as a cap-and-trade market. The cap is the amount of greenhouse gases a government will allow to be released into the atmosphere and emitters must trade to stay within that limit.

Article 6 of the 2015 Paris Agreement tasks national leaders with figuring this out on a global scale. So far, about 64 carbon compliance markets are now in operation around the world, the World Bank reported in May. The largest carbon compliance markets are in the European Union, China, Australia and Canada.

Every one of us, in ways large and small, has an impact on the climate. By investing in the protection of nature, you can help reduce your impact — while helping people and wildlife at the same time.

By “offsetting” a portion of your climate footprint through the purchase of real and verifiable nature-based carbon credits. Revenue from these credits — each of which represents a metric ton of climate-warming carbon — go to Conservation International projects that pay local communities to protect and restore their forests. These forests then absorb carbon from the atmosphere while providing livelihoods for communities and habitat for wildlife.