The Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), managed by Verra, is the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas (GHG) crediting program. It operates primarily in the voluntary carbon market, allowing individuals, companies, and organizations to offset their unavoidable emissions by purchasing carbon credits generated from certified projects.
VCS provides a robust, global standard and program for approval of credible voluntary offsets. The Verified Carbon Standard is presently the world’s leading voluntary greenhouse gas program. VCS quality assurance principles ensure all VCUs represent GHG emission reductions or removals that are real, measurable, additional, permanent, independently verified, conservatively estimated, uniquely numbered, and transparently listed.
The Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta), managed by Verra, is a leading certification program designed to verify and certify the sustainable development benefits of projects with social and environmental impacts. Unlike carbon standards that focus primarily on greenhouse gas reductions, SD VISta highlights a broader range of positive outcomes, such as gender equity, economic development, affordable clean energy, and biodiversity restoration.
It is a flexible framework for assessing and reporting on the sustainable development benefits of project-based activities, helping unlock new sources of finance to support and scale up high-impact efforts. The SD VISta Program sets out rules and criteria for the design, implementation and assessment of projects that aim to deliver high-impact sustainable development benefits. Under SD VISta, projects must demonstrate to the satisfaction of a third-party assessor that they meet the SD VISta Program’s rigorous rules and requirements and advance the SDGs. Once projects have been certified in the SD VISta Program, their contributions to the SDGs are listed on the Verra Registry. Some projects may issue SD VISta assets: units representing sustainable development benefits that can be sold or retired and claimed.
The Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards identify a project that simultaneously addresses climate change, supports local communities and smallholders, and conserves biodiversity. The CCB Standards identify land management projects that deliver net positive benefits for climate change mitigation, for local communities and for biodiversity.
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