The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market is considering new requirements for assessing the risk of carbon credit reversals, including stress tests for buffer pools and alternative compensation mechanisms such as insurance and permanence trusts, according to Carbon Pulse. For buyers of CCP-labelled credits and the developers supplying them, the review targets the weakest link in nature-based crediting: what happens when stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, and who pays for it.
A second work program, launched in February
The Integrity Council is launching its second Continuous Improvement Work Program (CIWP) focused on strengthening the durability of carbon credits, published on 18 February 2026, according to the ICVCM. The follow-up phase of the permanence program builds on a first report published in May 2025, with a working group convened in Q2 2026, according to belian.earth. Applications for that working group are under review, with applicants expected to hear back in Q2 2026, according to the ICVCM.
The mandate covers stress-testing buffer reserve pools, developing more standardised approaches to reversal risk assessment, and further development of the next generation of approaches to managing long-term monitoring and liability for reversals across the market, according to the ICVCM.
Stress tests designed around correlated disasters
The centrepiece is a plan to design and pilot a standardised stress test protocol for pooled buffer reserves with interested CCP-Eligible programs, to evaluate robustness across scenarios and decide if and when mandatory stress testing should be adopted, according to the ICVCM. The scenarios under examination include correlated reversal events such as large-scale wildfires and financial stress, according to belian.earth.
The direction of travel is already visible. The initial CIWP report recommended mandatory stress testing at minimum every five years, conducted by independent parties, according to belian.earth. The pilot is designed to test whether pooled reserves, which today absorb reversal losses program by program, would hold up when many projects fail at once.
Insurance, trusts and an industry-wide pool
Alongside stress tests, the program will explore innovative compensation mechanisms, including the feasibility of a permanence trust, the role of industry-wide pooled buffer reserves, and the potential of insurance products to provide flexible, extended coverage, according to the ICVCM. Parametric insurance products are explicitly among the tools under consideration, according to belian.earth.
The Permanence Trust concept developed by the American Forest Foundation, Kita and Climate Resilient Solutions is directly referenced in the ICVCM’s framing of this workstream, according to belian.earth. The program is also exploring whether the 40-year monitoring and compensation period should be extended for certain activity types.
The science behind the shift: from permanence to durability
The ICVCM’s scientific advisory partner on permanence and durability is SHIFT-CM, the Science for High-Integrity Frameworks to Transform Carbon Markets initiative, co-led by The Nature Conservancy and Yale University and hosted by Nature4Climate, according to belian.earth. SHIFT-CM published its Beyond Buffer Pools white paper in June 2026, reframing permanence as durability: a spectrum comprising both how long carbon stays out of the atmosphere and how likely it is to remain stored, with a taxonomy of seven active or proposed market mechanisms for managing non-permanence risk across natural climate solutions pathways.
SHIFT-CM’s forest working group is also producing global maps of natural reversal risk likelihood, fraction of carbon lost upon disturbance and likelihood of recovery, providing the empirical foundation for more rigorous, risk-based buffer pool calibration, according to belian.earth.
Definitions and leakage are tightening in parallel
The first report found that definitional inconsistencies across programs, for example differences between Verra’s and Climate Action Reserve’s definitions of unavoidable reversals, allow varying interpretations of minimum standards, according to belian.earth. Standardising the avoidable and unavoidable distinction, and the treatment of monitoring cessation, currently classed as an avoidable reversal but with limited guidance on quantifying compensation liability, are both on the agenda.
Leakage rules are tightening on the same empirical track. The central reference is Daigneault et al. (2025), a global data-driven assessment of carbon leakage from forestry published in Environmental Research Letters, which ACR and the ICVCM have both drawn on, according to belian.earth. Verra’s VM0045 was approved with a requirement for tiered default leakage deductions for projects below a 5% de minimis threshold, ACR’s IFM v2.1 received an equivalent condition, and CAR’s Mexico Forest Protocol v3 holds only conditional CCP approval: it must revise its leakage values before full labelling applies to its 8.1 million already-issued credits.
What buyers and developers should watch
For buyers, the work program signals that the integrity bar for durability is still rising. If stress testing becomes mandatory and reveals undercapitalised buffer pools, programs could be pushed toward higher buffer contributions or new insurance costs, feeding through to credit prices. The permanence trust and parametric insurance options, if adopted, would give buyers an additional layer of compensation beyond the pooled buffer.
For developers, the immediate checkpoint is the stress test pilot with CCP-Eligible programs and the decision on whether and how mandatory testing enters the Assessment Framework, according to the ICVCM. A possible extension of the 40-year monitoring and compensation period for certain activity types would directly affect project finance models. Both audiences should track the working group convened in Q2 2026 and the empirical reversal-risk mapping now being produced by SHIFT-CM, which will shape how buffer requirements are calibrated.
