Ecobiz.asia – Swiss climate-tech company EcoGuard Global and the Confederation of Coconut Farmers Organizations (CONFED) of the Philippines have launched the CONFED Carbon Office, a digital carbon market platform designed to connect more than 3 million coconut farmers to climate finance.
The platform’s go-live on Friday (Sept. 18, 2026) marks the transition from a collaboration agreement announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026 to the operation of what the partners describe as the Philippines’ first digital carbon market infrastructure.
The platform is designed to support carbon projects across coconut-growing regions covering about 3.6 million hectares of farmland. It integrates project registration, digital monitoring, reporting and verification (dMRV), documentation, traceability, carbon asset management and transactions in a single digital environment.
The partners said the platform is intended to improve transparency and efficiency in carbon project development while enabling farmers and project developers to access climate finance.
“The Philippines has significant potential to participate in global carbon markets through its extensive coconut-growing regions, agroforestry landscapes and agricultural communities,” CONFED President Charles Avila said.
“We are very pleased with the launch of the CONFED Carbon Office platform with EcoGuard as an important step towards converting potential into measurable climate impact and practical financial opportunity for farmers,” he added.
EcoGuard said the platform uses its proprietary carbon bank architecture, workflow automation and more than 60 digitized carbon methodologies. It also uses the Hedera network as its underlying distributed ledger technology and trust infrastructure.
The system is designed to provide traceability and auditable data across the carbon asset lifecycle, including the issuance, transfer and retirement of carbon units, while reducing the risk of double counting.
EcoGuard CEO Yashodhan Ramteke said the launch represents the implementation of the commitment made with CONFED in Davos.
“EcoGuard has built and brought live the digital carbon market infrastructure needed by CONFED to connect coconut farmers, project developers, buyers and investors through a trusted carbon ecosystem in the Philippines,” Ramteke said.
He said the company plans to build on its work with CONFED and develop a scalable model that could be replicated in other markets, including India, through local partnerships, with a focus on nature-based sectors and farmers.
As part of the launch, EcoGuard made its first investment in the initial tranche of carbon credits expected to be generated by the Samar COCAL Agroforestry Project.
Located on Samar, the Philippines’ third-largest island, the project is the first major project onboarded onto the CONFED Carbon Office. It has the potential to generate about 200,000 carbon credits annually, according to the companies.
The transaction was executed through the live platform and is intended to demonstrate how digital carbon market infrastructure can connect nature-based climate projects with institutional buyers and investors.
Stefan Deiss, Co-Founder and CEO of The Hashgraph Group, said the platform could expand carbon market participation among Philippine coconut farmers.
“With this go-live, CONFED and the Philippines now have Hedera-powered carbon market infrastructure for issuance, tracking, trading and retirement of high-integrity carbon credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement,” Deiss said.
The platform provides end-to-end functions covering project origination and onboarding, digital MRV and data management, carbon asset management, portfolio tracking, carbon credit transactions, project documentation and traceability, as well as investor and buyer engagement.
EcoGuard said consolidating these functions could reduce fragmentation in carbon project development and simplify the participation of agricultural and nature-based projects in domestic and international carbon markets.
The company is working with Telenym as an on-the-ground technology partner to connect individual farmers to the platform, while digital data collection is supported by satellite-enabled initiatives.
EcoGuard is also engaging with the Philippine Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and Department of Science and Technology on digital carbon market infrastructure.
The platform launch also aligns with the Philippines’ 2026–2030 roadmap for the voluntary forest carbon market, which identifies 1.2 million hectares of classified forest land and agricultural areas as potential investment zones for carbon projects, according to EcoGuard.
EcoGuard and CONFED plan to expand the platform by strengthening farmer-level connectivity, developing a pipeline of carbon projects and aligning the infrastructure with international climate finance frameworks. ***
