A. Governance

1. 1. Effective governance The carbon-crediting programme shall have effective programme governance to ensure transparency, accountability, continuous improvement and the overall quality of carbon credits.
2. 2. Tracking The carbon-crediting programme 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.
3. 3. Transparency The carbon-crediting programme 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.
4. 4. Robust independent third-party validation and verification The carbon-crediting programme shall have programme-level requirements for robust independent third-party validation and verification of mitigation activities.

B. Emissions Impact

1. 5. 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.
2. 6. 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.
3. 7. 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 scientific methods.
4. 8. 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

1. 9. Sustainable development benefits and safeguards The carbon-crediting programme 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.
2. 10. Contribution toward 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.