Position paper on scientifically credible carbon credits (via 4C) / Jan 2025

My colleagues Thomas Swinfield and Eleanor Toye Scott lead the publication of a comprehensive report of the steps the voluntary carbon market needs to take to restore its scientific credibility, with input from many of us in 4C and beyond.

• establishing common standards for carbon quantification and accounting, to cover additionality, leakage and permanence.
• avoiding perverse incentives and align the motivations of all stakeholders with high-integrity outcomes. [...]
• issuing all carbon credits based on trusted primary observations.
• making all the data needed to reproduce carbon calculations available in standard file formats.
• [...] reporting social and biodiversity dimensions of projects separately from carbon calculations.
• integrating DMRV methods into carbon and biodiversity accounting standards to reduce the financial and administrative burdens on nature-based projects and the local communities participating in or affected by them.

This paper represents three years of hard work from the team on trying to blend remote sensing with carbon quantification. For more reading on the topic, you may also wish to browse the full 4C publication list for the firehose of activity from the centre.