Verra Launches ABACUS Label for Ecosystem Restoration and Reforestation Credits

Verra, the nonprofit that serves as the leading standards-setter for the voluntary carbon market, today launched its new ABACUS market label. The new seal of approval indicates exceptional quality for carbon credits generated by ecosystem restoration and reforestation projects that go above and beyond what is required under Verra’s already high-integrity methodology for Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR), known as VM0047, in the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program.

Verra developed the ABACUS label with input from a consensus-based working group that included experts from Amazon, Carbon Direct, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, Pachama, TerraCarbon, Stanford University, SCS Global Services, and the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, the recently launched Symbiosis Coalition, led by Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Salesforce, has cited ABACUS (external) as an inspiration for its principles for high-integrity nature-based carbon removals.

“Creating new forests is one of the most powerful and positive steps we can take in the fight against climate change. The ABACUS label will let Verra and our stakeholders test new concepts to further advance carbon credit integrity and quality. And we hope it will expand the market for these cutting-edge greenhouse gas removal credits.”

Judith Simon, president and interim CEO of Verra

“Restoring nature is an important component of fighting climate change, alongside work to reduce carbon from corporate value chains,” said Jamey Mulligan, Head of Carbon Neutralization at Amazon. “ABACUS is making meaningful strides to ensure that investments in this segment will support truly additional, biodiverse, and lasting restoration.”

Ecosystem restoration projects wishing to apply the ABACUS label to their carbon credits must first meet the requirements of Verra’s landmark Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program and VCS Methodology VM0047 Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation. They must then go further in several key areas, including the following:

• Dynamic additionality: Building on VM0047, projects must rigorously match and observe control areas to measure project additionality in real time.
• Transparency: Projects must publish all inventory measurements, justify modeling approaches, and report on disturbance monitoring annually in the project area.
• Permanence: Projects must restore to diverse, ecologically appropriate ecosystems, while regularly updating their carbon stock stabilization strategy throughout and after the crediting period.
• Avoided displacement of food production: Projects must effectively maintain or enhance agricultural production in the project area and surrounding landscape.

The ABACUS label is complementary and additive to other ongoing market-wide integrity initiatives and labels, such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principles. Going forward, Verra will continuously update the ABACUS label to ensure that it reflects the best and most recent science and technology.

Verra is a global leader helping to tackle the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges. As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, Verra is committed to helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve livelihoods, and protect natural resources by working with the private and public sectors. We support climate action and sustainable development with standards programs and tools that credibly, transparently and robustly assess environmental and social impacts and enable funding for sustaining and scaling up projects that verifiably deliver these benefits.