The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) released the second half of its Carbon Core Principle’s (CCPs) guidance to address carbon credit integrity. With the aim to bolster different activities pushing towards the common net-zero goal, the ICVCM’s new guidance should hopefully usher in high-quality across the voluntary carbon market, and we welcome these with open arms.

The IC-VCM has grouped the CCPs into three categories, with Sustainable Development being one of them. It has been defined as social and environmental safeguards, and avoid locking-in technologies or practices that are incompatible with reaching net zero GHG emissions by mid-century.

Identifying low-quality carbon credits in the market is an essential step to ensuring that VCMs achieve their potential impact in combating the climate crisis. This will reduce the risk to buyers of purchasing low-quality credits, and provide clear guidance to standards to help them improve their processes to reduce the proportion of low-integrity credits in the market. It will finally put our efforts in the spotlight with the 9 Sustainable Development Goals achieved since the first school join the Project Activity back in March 2016.