High-quality nature-based projects deliver climate benefits, protect biodiversity, and support the rural communities that manage forests. Amidst increasing scrutiny, leading companies need modern, dynamic criteria to find the very best forest projects.
Updated August, 2025
At Pachama, we are committed to quality. Over the past seven years, we’ve evaluated hundreds of forest carbon projects certified by the world’s four largest voluntary carbon registries, and we’ve learned a few things! Historically, Pachama had an evaluation criteria that was used to assess project quality and we built several DMRV tools to streamline the assessment of key factors like dynamic baselines, leakage and more. Though Pachama is no longer evaluating projects according to its evaluation criteria, we are committed to making this criteria available for the public, advancing a more transparent and high-integrity carbon market that reflects the latest advancements in technology and scientific research. We hope this brings us one step closer to the modern carbon market that our planet demands.
See how we evaluate quality.
The Pachama Quality Standard.
What do we mean by ‘quality’? Every forest conservation or restoration project listed on the Pachama Marketplace must adhere to our four core standards:
- Additional: emissions reductions would not have occurred without the incentive of carbon credits.
- Conservative: emissions reductions are robustly quantified, and each credit represents at least one metric ton of carbon.
- Durable: the project delivers a long-lasting climate benefit ensured by continuous monitoring and public reporting.
- Beyond Carbon: the project causes no net harm and delivers biodiversity and community benefits.
Project Evaluation Criteria.
To ensure every forest project we offer upholds our Quality Standard, we’ve developed the Project Evaluation Criteria. It comprises a series of quality checks every project must pass. Remote sensing is core to many of these checks; however, it can’t tell the whole story, so we also surface important insights relevant to carbon credit quality. Check out an overview of each of our checks below.
Our latest evolution
After years building technology to find great projects, we are now opening our technology suite to the market, providing geospatial insights into carbon accounting that can dramatically accelerate high-integrity project assessments. Click below to explore these insights further.
As we continue to advance our technology, we’ll continue to share our ongoing research and learnings with market participants, experts, and the general public. Pachama is devoted to transparency, and we want our technology and research to be accessible to all. Continue to follow along by subscribing to our newsletter, reading our latest research and share your questions or feedback at [email protected].
