From Connectivity to dMRV: Can Mobile Infrastructure Help Close the Verification Data Gap?

As countries, companies and institutions expand work on climate-finance, a significant challenge remains: the lack of affordable, scalable and trusted digital systems to verify carbon and non-carbon climate outcomes, particularly across low- and middle-income countries. 

While carbon credits outcomes are widely measured in tonnes, non-carbon outcomes such as adaptation, disaster-risk reduction, ecosystem resilience, circular-economy material flows, deforestation-free supply chains and nature-related risk management increasingly have finance, compliance or reporting mechanisms attached to them. However, many of these mechanisms still lack the verification infrastructure needed to prove that outcomes have occurred and that finance can flow with confidence. 

Mobile networks already provide extensive infrastructure, connectivity and data capabilities across many climate-vulnerable regions, yet their role in carbon and non-carbon digital MRV remains underexplored. This session will bring together mobile operators, technology companies, climate-finance actors and infrastructure stakeholders to examine where mobile-enabled verification can strengthen climate finance, and what barriers must first be overcome. 

The discussion will explore practical considerations including data quality, MNO commercial incentives, interoperability, and the partnership models needed to make carbon and non-carbon dMRV systems viable and scalable.