INTEGRITY

Integrity is the confidence that a carbon credit represents a genuine, additional, and permanent climate outcome – one that reflects real emission reductions or removals, is accurately quantified, and would not have happened without the project. A high-integrity credit can be trusted to deliver the climate impact it claims.  

Integrity is the foundation on which the credibility of the entire voluntary carbon market rests. Every credit represents a promise that a tonne of CO₂ has genuinely been avoided, reduced, or removed. When that promise doesn’t hold up – because a project wasn’t truly additional, over-credited its impact, or reversed after issuance – it undermines trust in the market as a whole and exposes buyers to reputational, financial, and regulatory risk. As corporate climate commitments come under growing scrutiny, integrity has become the deciding factor between credits that genuinely support net-zero pathways and credits that expose companies to accusations of greenwashing. For serious buyers, integrity isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s the license to operate in the market. 

• Additionality
• Permanence
• Robust baseline setting
• Accurate carbon accounting
• Leakage prevention
• Independent validation and verification
• Transparent monitoring
• No double counting
• Social and environmental safeguards
• Clear and credible claims

These reflect the core dimensions we look at when weighing a project’s carbon integrity – Additionality, Carbon Accounting, Permanence, Leakage and Co-Benefits – together with the partner reliability and safeguard checks that sit alongside them. 

Integrity is assessed by working systematically through the core components of a project – Additionality, Carbon Accounting, Permanence, Leakage and Co-Benefits – and testing the evidence behind each one. For additionality, this means examining whether the project would have happened anyway: what alternative scenarios were considered, whether there are genuine financial or regulatory barriers to the project happening without carbon finance, and whether similar activities are already common practice in the region. Carbon accounting is reviewed for how conservatively the baseline, biomass, and carbon pools were quantified, and whether monitoring and reporting are robust and transparent. Permanence is assessed against the reversal risks relevant to that project type and geography – fire, drought, pests and disease, storms, flooding, sea-level rise, and anthropogenic risks such as encroachment or insecure land tenure – together with whether monitoring commitments extend meaningfully beyond the crediting period. Leakage is checked by looking at whether activities might simply displace emissions to a neighbouring area or the wider market. Co-benefits are reviewed for both ecological outcomes, such as biodiversity impact and monitoring, and social outcomes, such as community livelihoods and contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Alongside these, we at FORLIANCE also assess the project partner – financial health, governance and ownership transparency, and track record and whether safeguards such as Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), grievance mechanisms, and stakeholder engagement are genuinely in place, drawing on independent third-party ratings where relevant. 

Integrity risks show up differently depending on where you look. Additionality risk arises when a project’s baseline assumes more deforestation, harvesting, or degradation than is actually plausible – for example when comparable land nearby shows lower pressure than the baseline claims, or when similar conservation activities are already common practice in the area without carbon finance. Carbon accounting risk arises when baselines or biomass estimates are modelled optimistically rather than conservatively. Permanence risk covers both natural hazards – fire, drought, pests and disease, storms, flooding, sea-level rise and human-driven risks such as encroachment, conflict, or insecure land tenure and carbon rights, especially where monitoring doesn’t extend far enough beyond the crediting period. Leakage risk arises when project activities shift deforestation pressure to a neighbouring area rather than genuinely avoiding it. Safeguard risk includes inadequate Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), missing or ineffective grievance mechanisms, and insufficient stakeholder engagement. Because these risks are interconnected, a credible assessment needs to examine them together, not in isolation.