Cambridge Permanence and Durability Voluntary Carbon Market Workshop: Resources and Summary

Over sixty experts from across the voluntary carbon market ecosystem — policymakers, practitioners, academia convened at the University of Cambridge on January 31 & February 1, 2024 to discuss issues and challenges related to permanence and durability and identify potential solutions for the continued development of the market. Historically there has been a lack of consistent accounting for differences in storage duration and risk in the voluntary carbon market. It was agreed that the materials from the workshop would be used as an input to the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Continuous Improvement Work Program (IC-VCM CIWP) on Permanence due to commence spring 2024. After publishing its Core Carbon Principles and corresponding Assessment Framework in July 2023, the IC-VCM launched the CIWPs to consider key issues related to the future of the carbon markets and to develop recommendations to inform the next iteration of IC-VCM Core Carbon Principles label requirements. Materials include the pre workshop resources sent to all participants and the post event summary, aggregated, anonymized, synthesised participant views on key topics and the workshop systems design exercise outputs. These are made available on Cambridge Open Engage as a research summary/ policy brief by Harriet Hunnable at the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (4C) on behalf of the workshop conveners and facilitators: Pedro Barata, Harriet Hunnable, Alexia Kelly, Braeden Mayer and Julia Strong.