The Permanence Trust
An innovative approach to tackling risk in carbon crediting
Managing Risk at Market Scale: Preliminary Findings from the Permanence Trust Feasibility Study
The Permanence Problem
For carbon markets to credibly scale and maximize their climate impact, all stakeholders — funders, credit buyers, standards bodies, and project developers — need assurance that claims from carbon projects represent and retain their true climate benefit. That means finding ways to manage non-permanence risk to policy-relevant durability thresholds.
Every carbon credit carries some inherent risk of non-permanence, but just because there’s risk involved doesn’t mean they should be disregarded. And since no single pathway (forestry, soil, DAC, blue carbon, etc.) is sufficient to achieve global climate goals, we need to invest in all of them through voluntary and compliance carbon markets. The challenge then becomes making all pathways investable.
The carbon market has tried using several tools for managing non-permanence risk, from insurance to buffer pools—but no single mechanism has been able to meet all conditions to guarantee durability thresholds.
So how do we ensure that every carbon credit can withstand non-permanence risk so that:
-
Buyers feel confident they’re making a worthwhile investment,
-
Regulators don’t discount credits with higher non-permanence risk, and
-
The planet benefits from immediate, long-term, and permanent carbon removal?
The Permanence Trust: A Concept for Guaranteeing Durability
The American Forest Foundation has conceived an innovative approach aimed to fill all core functions necessary for permanence for all credit types. The Permanence Trust would calculate how many financial resources should be set aside today to grow and be actively used to manage non-permanence risk.
How It Works
While other market tools exist to address non-permanence risk, the Permanence Trust is unique in that it prices in the cost to actively prevent reversals, monitor actual reversals, and provide recourse over any policy-relevant time threshold, including long after the initial crediting period expires.
The Trust is compatible with existing risk management solutions, works for all project types, and can manage multiple durability thresholds. If adopted by the market, the Trust would improve comparability across credit types by applying a consistent permanence assurance mechanism.
What Makes the Permanence Trust Different?
The Trust pools both collective risk and resources, increasing access for participation across all project types and sizes.
The Trust provides resources to invest in innovation within the carbon market, and manages actions to reverse the storage of existing climate benefit
The Trust’s operations incorporate financial support of long-term monitoring systems
Instead of trying to predict the future of reversals, the Trust instead ensures that any reversal is replaced by another temporary credit, addresses interim gaps through insurance, and ultimately retires liability by purchasing a removal credit backed by geologic storage.
The Trust provides a framework for comparing carbon credit types across the market, operationally unifies definitions and measurement methods for permanence, and ensures NCS credits deliver the same durability as other permanent credit types such as geologic storage.
Fees generated through carbon credit sales are pooled together and grown both through and after the Credit Liability Period, generating long-term funds that can be reinvested in monitoring, risk reduction, and replacement of carbon storage when needed.
The Trust shift permanence assurance from a passive approach of holding reserves that may or may not cover future reversals to an active strategy that funds prevention, monitoring, and replacement of future reversals to ensure long-term durability of carbon.
How does the Trust interact with market entities?
If scaled, a permanence trust would actively manage non-permanence risk beyond the crediting period, addressing a major gap in current market structures. It monitors projects continuously, models evolving risks, and actively deploys capital to maintain climate outcomes. This creates a persistent, system-level assurance of durability rather than a time-limited project guarantee. This system-level design engages and benefits all market entities.
Bringing the Trust to Market
While the Permanence Trust is promising, it remains theory until practically applied, so AFF is taking several steps to turn this idea into reality.
The Permanence Fund
AFF has already successfully tested this concept in our own forestry project portfolio — more than 1,400 properties across 20 states — with the Permanence Fund. Like the Trust concept, it is funded by a fee on each credit sold, used to actively prevent reversals when landowner contracts conclude, monitor for reversals even after the crediting period, and remedy any reversals.
We calculated the necessary financial contribution for the Fund to be viable by taking into account several key factors, including a range of possible reversal rates, compensation credit price, and the Fund’s rate of return. The Fund is currently active, resourced by a portion of the proceeds from our first credits generated.
Read more about the Permanence Fund and the evolution of AFF’s approach to permanence here.
Permanence Trust Feasibility Study
AFF partnered with carbon insurance specialist Kita and consultancy Climate Resilient Solutions to conduct a feasibility study, supported by a robust Advisory Group of more than 50 organizations representing all stakeholder groups through the carbon market, including crediting bodies, project developers, credit buyers, insurance companies, standards entities, and more.
The study includes framework development, stakeholder engagement, and risk modeling for the Trust, and grapples with topics like entity structure and design, financial planning, non-permanence risk assessments, carbon portfolio management, and mapping loss recourse options.
Developing a Pilot
AFF is in the early stages of creating a Permanence Trust pilot program, expected in 2027.
Everyone Plays a Part
The Permanence Trust can only exist with the backing and participation of stakeholders across the entire carbon market.
-
Policymakers should incorporate permanence trust structures into eligible criteria for credible long-term commitments
-
Buyers should buy credits participating in a permanence trust.
-
Standards bodies should integrate a permanence trust into their methodologies and determine the process for purchasing warranties.
-
Project developers across all pathways should have their projects participate in a permanence trust.
Blogs
September 5, 2025
What is the Permanence Trust? A Look at a New Solution for Nature
The American Forest Foundation has created an innovative new approach that aims to fill all the core functionalities necessary for permanence: The Permanence Trust. This approach frames non-permanence as a risk to be managed, strengthens market-wide definitions and risk management strategies, and provides a framework that allows NCS credits and other carbon credit types (like geologic storage) to be managed together, increasing overall market confidence and credibility.
April 30, 2026
From Fund to Trust: the Evolution of AFF’s Approach to Managing Non-Permanence Risk
This issue of managing non-permanence risk affects buyers, standards, project developers, and all other market participants, making it a significant impediment to scaling both nature- and tech-based solutions and thus slowing climate progress. We recently launched a study to test the feasibility of our Permanence Trust concept. But our work to address concerns of durability and permanence long predates the Trust.
September 17, 2025
Carbon Market Stakeholders Launch Feasibility Study, Advisory Group on New Permanence Framework
The American Forest Foundation announced today the launch of their partnership with carbon insurance specialist Kita to conduct a design and feasibility study for a new system-wide approach to addressing permanence for carbon markets.
May 28, 2025
New Report Details Innovative Approach to Permanence for Natural Climate Solutions
The American Forest Foundation released today “A Trust for Permanence: Enabling a New Generation of Permanent Nature-Based Credits in the Voluntary Carbon Market,” a new concept paper that details an innovative approach to ensuring the quality and integrity of credits produced through natural climate solutions (NCS).
November 12, 2024
New White Paper Sets Bar for Quality in Forest Carbon Projects
This week, the American Forest Foundation, a nonprofit organization that empowers family forest owners to create meaningful conservation impact, released its latest white paper, “Catalyzing Forest Carbon Project Quality: Addressing Issues of Integrity in Improved Forest Management Carbon Projects." The paper discusses the common challenges that IFM projects face in the voluntary carbon market and details four key elements the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) focuses on to ensure high quality: additionality, permanence, leakage, and social integrity.
Permanence Trust Advisory Group Members
Kristina Hughes, American Forest Foundation
Lynn Riley, American Forest Foundation
Nathan Truitt, American Forest Foundation
Richard Campbell, American Forest Foundation
Racheal Notto, Kita
Simon Schultheis, Agreena ApS
Kyle Hemes, Amazon
Janet Peace, Anew
Richard Rheingans, Appalachian State University
Ingeborg Mägi , Arbonics
Amy Duval Carlson, Arbor Day Foundation
Spencer Meyer, BeZero Carbon
Lucyann Murray, Boston Consulting Group
Rachael Ross, Carbon Direct Inc
Peter Fegelman, SusCap Advisors
Noah Deich, Carbon180 / RMI
Lyuba Tarnopolsky, CarbonPool
Jennifer Larkin, Chaco Vivo
Chris Williams, Clark University
Chetan Aggarwal, Climate Spring
Molly Tinker, Climeworks
Chris Woodall, CTrees
Sassan Saatchi, CTrees
Serge Bushman, DuraVault
Holly Pearen, Environmental Defense Fund
Hannah Robinson, Equitable Earth
Lucas Clay, Georgia Institute of Technology
Fiona Perera, Gold Standard
Mikela Waldman, Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market
Max DuBuisson, Indigo Ag
Christopher Kilner, Isometric
Sheldon Zakreski, Living Sky Carbon Solutions
Maria Huyer, Mast Reforestation
Ben Santhouse-James, McKinsey
Dan Harburg, Mombak
Moriz Vohrer, naturebase
Lauren Frisch, Netflix
Michael Kent, New Leaf Climate Partners
Carlos Silva, Pachama
Freddy Cushnir, Ponterra
Victor Reyes, Ponterra
Jonathan McGillivray, Resilient LLP
Matt Kirley, RMI
Kyle Clark-Sutton, RMI
Jennifer Jenkins, Rubicon Carbon
Janis Dubno, Sorenson Impact Institute
Edward Mitchard, Space Intelligence
Peter Mayer, Stairs Dillenbeck Finley Mayer PLLC
Connor Nolan, Stanford University
Derik Broekhoff, Stockholm Environment Institute
Dee Yang, Systemiq
Rishi Das, Terraformation
Josh Burke, The Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics
Susan Cook-Patton, The Nature Conservancy
David Antonioli, Transition Finance
Alexander Dhond, University of Oxford
Liz Guinessey, Verra
Giulia Carbone, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Learn more and get involved!