Why Bad Baselines Broke REDD+ — And How Satellites Are Fixing It — Ed Mitchard (Space Intelligence)

In this episode of This Week in Carbon, hosts Edward Smith and Rene Velasquez sit down with Ed Mitchard, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Space Intelligence, one of just three companies selected by Verra to produce the jurisdictional risk maps that underpin VM0048, and the geospatial intelligence provider powering due diligence for the Symbiosis Coalition.

Ed's path to the carbon markets is unlike most. A teenage documentary competition took him to the Amazon at 15, where deforestation was impossible to ignore even inside a pristine national park. That moment set the course of his career — from biology at Oxford, to a PhD in Edinburgh, six months at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on radar satellite data, and eventually co-founding Space Intelligence in 2018.

This episode goes deep on the infrastructure, the science, and the hard truths behind high-integrity forest carbon.

Key topics:

• Why corporates are forming advanced market coalitions instead of buying spot credits — and the real early-stage financing gap behind it
• The ARC Coalition announced at Ecosperity Singapore: what makes it structurally different from Symbiosis, including its integrated financing facility
• Durability vs. permanence — why the distinction matters and how Space Intelligence helps buyers assess long-term site risk
• The removals vs. avoidance false binary: why deprioritising REDD+ at a time when tropical deforestation drives 15–20% of global emissions may be the market's most costly mistake
• What broke first-generation REDD+ baselines — and how VM0048 fixes overcrediting by removing developer discretion entirely
• The real-world impact of the 2023 backlash on deforestation rates inside dormant project boundaries
• Why free Copernicus satellite data could be the unlock for DMRV at scale across tens of thousands of nature-based projects

A rigorous, science-grounded conversation at the centre of the forest carbon debate. Essential listening for anyone in carbon markets, nature-based solutions, or climate finance.

🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more.