Carbon and Nature Markets
Additionality and permanence are two of the most important tests of whether a climate outcome is real. A credit or project that fails either one may look valid on paper while delivering little or nothing in practice, which is why they sit at the centre of market integrity.
An outcome is additional if it would not have happened without the finance the credit provided. Protecting a forest that was never at risk, or funding a project that would have gone ahead anyway, is not additional, and a credit for it represents no real gain.
An outcome is permanent if it lasts. Carbon stored in a forest that later burns or is cleared returns to the atmosphere, undoing the benefit. Permanence asks whether a claimed outcome will endure long enough to matter, and how the risk of reversal is managed.
Both tests require judgement about what would have happened otherwise and what will happen in future, neither of which can be observed directly. That difficulty is what makes them easy to overstate and hard to challenge without good data.
Credible additionality and permanence depend on rich evidence and continuous monitoring, not one-off claims. Druid Chain is built to record that evidence over time, so these tests can be assessed on data rather than assertion.
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