The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) has launched a policy guide aimed at helping governments align national carbon trading frameworks and Article 6.2 bilateral agreements with high-integrity carbon credit standards.
Titled Module 2: Building High-Integrity Carbon Markets – a guide for policymakers, the publication addresses international delegates at the COP31 Article 6.2 Ambition Dialogue in Antalya. The guide outlines how governments can establish locally tailored crediting mechanisms while applying global quality thresholds.
The framework leverages the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), an independent global quality benchmark that establishes unified integrity standards across corporate voluntary offsets, domestic compliance regimes, and sovereign Article 6.2 cross-border transfers.
Key market metrics, regulatory provisions, and policy mechanisms highlighted in the guide include:
- Market approval scale: As of November 2026, 13 carbon-crediting programs are designated as CCP-Eligible, 47 methodologies across 17 project categories are CCP-Approved, and approximately 120 million issued credits across 30 nations bear the CCP quality label.
- Corporate market demand: Analysis of over 2,500 corporate credit buyers indicates that retired credit volumes derived from CCP-Approved methodologies expanded 6.6 times between 2022 and 2025.
- National program assessment: Enables national governments to submit domestic crediting mechanisms for formal CCP assessment, following a December 2025 decision by the Integrity Council’s Governing Board.
- Article 6.2 reporting integration: Features an annotated Article 6.2 Initial Report template demonstrating how CCP technical evaluations satisfy Paris Agreement environmental integrity requirements.
- National compliance alignment: Highlights sovereign implementation models, including Singapore’s carbon tax framework allowing up to 5 per cent offset coverage, and its S$76 million procurement of 2.175 million tonnes of nature-based credits, where three selected projects utilize CCP-aligned methodologies.
Lorna Ritchie, Director of Public Affairs at the Integrity Council, stated that the CCP framework allows governments to maintain national sovereignty over local ecosystems and technology priorities while providing global buyers with consistent quality assurances.
Ritchie added that establishing a unified global integrity threshold allows diverse crediting systems—including independent standards, national registries, and the Article 6.4 Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism—to operate within a connected international market.
