Protected Agriculture in Mexico: Building the Methodology for the First Certified Agricultural Green Bond

The issuance of green bonds has grown rapidly in the past several years. However, agricultural green bonds have lagged far behind, because of the difficulties of developing international certifications, such as those of the Climate Bond Initiative (CBI). These certifications are essential, but demand the creation of comparable criteria and a certification approach that is applicable across several financial asset classes. This has proven to be methodologically and analytically complex in the case of agricultural green bonds because of the difficulties of assessing environmental and social benefits from different technologies in varying geographic and climatic regions. This paper describes the approach, methodology, analysis, and recommendations used to support a green bond for specific protected agricultural technologies in select crops in Mexico. The paper concludes with recommendations for defining minimum technological criteria that provide reasonable assurance to stakeholders that the expected environmental and social benefits will be achieved