• Cercarbono is undergoing assessment by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) to become a Core Carbon Principle (CCP) Eligible Program, demonstrating their continued commitment to high integrity and transparency in the voluntary carbon market.

• The assessment will evaluate Cercarbono’s adherence to CCP criteria, including governance, transparency, quantification of emissions reductions, and sustainable development benefits.
  

• Cercarbono aims to provide stakeholders with further assurance that their certified carbon credits represent impactful and equitable climate action that delivers real, verifiable emissions reductions.

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Bogotá, Colombia – October 2nd, 2024 – Today, Environmental project certification standard Cercarbono announced that it will be assessed by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) to be a Core Carbon Principle (CCP) Eligible Program. This assessment, conducted in accordance with ICVCM’s Assessment Framework, signifies a critical step in Cercarbono’s continued commitment to ensuring the integrity of the voluntary carbon market.

ICVCM’s Assessment Framework requires Cercarbono to demonstrate that they meet the rigorous CCP criteria for effective governance, transparency, tracking, and robust independent third-party validation and verification. Cercarbono will also have to meet the CCPs’ program-related rules on robust quantification of emission reductions and removals, no double counting, and sustainable development benefits and safeguards.

Cercarbono’s participation in this evaluation process underscores its commitment to continuous improvement and its dedication to providing a high-integrity framework for carbon project certification. With over 200 global projects registered in more than 15 countries to date, Cercarbono is focused on elevating the voices of underserved communities and helping them participate and actively shape environmental markets so that finance flows stay in the countries that need it the most.

CEO Alex Saer, said: “Cercarbono was established to raise  standards of integrity and transparency in the voluntary carbon market. We believe this assessment will provide further assurance to our stakeholders that Cercarbono carbon credits represent impactful and equitable climate action that delivers real, verifiable emissions reductions.”

“Cercarbono is dedicated to continuously improving our processes and ensuring the environmental and social integrity of our certified projects. We look forward to engaging with ICVCM to ensure full alignment with their Core Carbon Principles.”

The CCPs have been established as the first independent global benchmark for high-integrity carbon credits. They are designed to build trust in the voluntary carbon market and introduce standardization, providing a strong foundation of integrity that will enable the market to scale and maximize its potential to tackle rising greenhouse gas emissions. Their rigorous criteria provide assurance that CCP-labeled credits represent a tonne of emissions reduced or removed from the atmosphere and that they finance projects that bring sustainable development and biodiversity benefits.

Once a standard is a CCP-Eligible program, the next step to issue CCP-labeled credits is the assessment of the methodologies they operate. Methodologies are the rules that carbon-crediting programs set for designing and implementing different kinds of projects. Under ICVCM’s “two-tick” approach, CCP-Eligible programs may only tag carbon credits with the CCP label if those credits have been generated using methodologies that have also been approved by ICVCM.

The outcome of the evaluation will be publicly available on the ICVCM website, providing stakeholders with transparent insights into Cercarbono’s program and its alignment with the CCPs.

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Media contact:

Valentina Fierro

media@cercarbono.com

About Cercarbono:

Cercarbono is an environmental project certification standard that accelerates high-integrity carbon, circular economy, and biodiversity projects. Established in Colombia in 2016, we are one of the three leading voluntary carbon standards worldwide. Leveraging our team’s multicultural expertise, firsthand knowledge of vital ecosystems, and predominantly Latin American presence, we bring an on-the-ground understanding of the requirements needed for successful climate initiatives. With over 200 global projects registered in more than 15 countries to date, our focus is on elevating the voices of underserved communities and helping them participate and actively shape environmental markets so that finance flows stay in the countries that need it the most.

About the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market:

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (Integrity Council) is an independent, non-profit governance body for the voluntary carbon market, which aims to ensure the voluntary carbon market accelerates a just transition to 1.5°C.

The Integrity Council aims to set and maintain a voluntary global threshold standard for quality in the voluntary carbon market. The threshold standard is based on the Integrity Council’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) and is implemented through an Assessment Framework that sets out what high quality means by reference to those principles. The result is a threshold standard and label that provide a credible, rigorous, and readily accessible means of identifying high-quality carbon credits.

About the Core Carbon Principles:

A. GOVERNANCE

Effective governance

The carbon-crediting program shall have effective program governance to ensure transparency, accountability, continuous improvement and the overall quality of carbon credits.

Tracking

The carbon-crediting program shall operate or make use of a registry to uniquely identify, record and track mitigation activities and carbon credits issued to ensure credits can be identified securely and unambiguously.

Transparency

The carbon-crediting program shall provide comprehensive and transparent information on all credited mitigation activities. The information shall be publicly available in electronic format and shall be accessible to non-specialised audiences, to enable scrutiny of mitigation activities.

Robust independent third-party validation and verification

The carbon-crediting program shall have program-level requirements for robust independent third-party validation and verification of mitigation activities.

B. EMISSIONS IMPACT

Additionality

The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions or removals from the mitigation activity shall be additional, i.e., they would not have occurred in the absence of the incentive created by carbon credit revenues.4

Permanence

The GHG emission reductions or removals from the mitigation activity shall be permanent or, where there is a risk of reversal, there shall be measures in place to address those risks and compensate reversals.

Robust quantification of emission reductions and removals

The GHG emission reductions or removals from the mitigation activity shall be robustly quantified, based on conservative approaches, completeness and sound scientific methods.

No double counting

The GHG emission reductions or removals from the mitigation activity shall not be double counted, i.e., they shall only be counted once towards achieving mitigation targets or goals. Double counting covers double issuance, double claiming, and double use.

C. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable development benefits and safeguards

The carbon-crediting program shall have clear guidance, tools and compliance procedures to ensure mitigation activities conform with or go beyond widely established industry best practices on social and environmental safeguards while delivering positive sustainable development impacts.

Contribution to net zero transition

The mitigation activity shall avoid locking-in levels of GHG emissions, technologies or carbon-intensive practices that are incompatible with the objective of achieving net zero GHG emissions by mid-century.