The Pledge Outpacing The Proof

Corporate commitments to the voluntary carbon market rose 227% year-on-year in 2026, even as the volume of credits actually retired fell 7%, according to market-intelligence firm Carbon Direct.

The gap reflects a deeper integrity problem. An analysis by carbon-data firm Senken found that 84% of credits trading at public benchmark prices failed standard tests for additionality, baseline accuracy, leakage or permanence, meaning the emissions reductions they claimed were often not real or already counted elsewhere.

Much of the scrutiny has centred on forestry and avoided-deforestation credits, the category most frequently cited in independent audits and academic research as overstating its climate impact. The communities living in or near credited forests, who frequently see little of the revenue these projects generate, bear the consequences when a credit's claimed protection turns out to be overstated.

Not all of the market is struggling. High-durability carbon removal is expanding quickly; new approaches such as enhanced rock weathering issued their first credits in 2025. Forward agreements to buy this future capacity now outstrip current retirements by a ratio of 70 to 1, meaning the market is increasingly funding capacity that does not yet exist.

That ratio captures the wider problem with offsetting as a climate strategy: it has always been easier to fund a future promise than to verify a present one. The voluntary carbon market did not set out to be this exploitable. Measuring an avoided tonne of carbon in a forest is genuinely difficult, and difficult things get approximated until the approximation becomes the product being sold.