Integrity Council launches new guide for policymakers
By Lorna Ritchie, Director of Public Affairs
One carbon market. Multiple uses. One global integrity threshold.
As governments come together for the Article 6.2 Ambition Dialogue at COP31, a central question is how international carbon markets can deliver greater climate ambition while recognising different national circumstances and priorities.
It’s a timely moment to launch our new Module 2: Building High-Integrity Carbon Markets – a guide for policymakers.
High-integrity carbon credits can support corporate climate action, help companies meet domestic compliance obligations, and enable international cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
These are not fundamentally different carbon markets. They are different uses of carbon credits within one increasingly interconnected global market. A recent summary of technical reviews of Article 6.2 cooperative approaches showed that countries are using all three types of crediting programs to trade emissions reductions across borders – domestic, international, and independent.
So how do we ensure the same high standard of integrity, regardless of where credits are generated, which program issues them or how they are used?
This is precisely what the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) are designed to achieve.
The CCPs establish a common global independent threshold for high-integrity carbon credits, without requiring every country to adopt identical methodologies, programs or regulatory systems.
This is particularly important for Article 6.2, which establishes the requirements for international cooperation, including authorisation, accounting and reporting, but deliberately accommodates different underlying regulations, frameworks, standards and procedures.
Countries can use independent, government-administered or international crediting programs, including the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) established under Article 6.4. Each provides a route for generating credits, while the CCPs perform a different, complementary role: providing a common threshold while allowing countries to pursue approaches that reflect their own circumstances and priorities.
We need consistency in integrity, while maintaining a diversity of ways for countries to achieve it.
As of November 2026, 13 carbon-crediting programs are CCP-Eligible, 47 methodologies across 17 project types have been CCP-Approved, and an estimated 120 million credits issued from 30 countries have been approved to use the CCP label (MSCI, Nov 2026).
Importantly, governments can now also apply for CCP assessment of their own crediting programs, following a decision by the Integrity Council’s Governing Board in December 2025.
This means countries can develop locally anchored approaches reflecting their ecosystems, technologies, institutions and development priorities, while seeking international recognition that their credits meet the same global integrity threshold. Corporate and sovereign buyers are increasingly looking at established quality references for procured credits: for example, Abatable’s (2026) analysis of over 2,500 named buyers found that the share of total retired credit volumes from CCP-Approved methodologies grew 6.6 times between 2022 and 2025.
Singapore illustrates how this can work in practice. Its carbon tax allows companies to use eligible international credits against up to 5% of taxable emissions. Separately, the government announced contracts in September 2025 to purchase 2.175 million tonnes of nature-based credits, worth approximately S$76 million, towards its 2030 climate commitments. Three of the four selected projects intend to use methodologies with CCP-Approved versions.
How can governments use the CCPs?
For governments, the CCPs offer a way to build on existing technical assessments when establishing eligibility requirements for domestic compliance, international cooperation and corporate credit use, while retaining control over national priorities and additional requirements.
Our new guide shows how governments can put this into practice, including an annotated Article 6.2 Initial Report template indicating how the CCP assessments can be used to demonstrate environmental integrity requirements, alongside the country-specific information required under Article 6.
As discussions at COP31 turn towards accelerating ambition and implementation, we have an opportunity to build a more interconnected high-integrity carbon market that mobilises finance at scale, supports locally appropriate approaches and maintains the same high expectations for credit integrity.
One market. Multiple uses. One global integrity threshold.
I’m delighted to share Building High-Integrity Carbon Markets – a guide for policymakers and hope it will be a practical resource for governments working to turn climate ambition into action.
Lorna Ritchie, Director of Public Affairs, Integrity Council