Are REDD+ Carbon Credits Eligible for SBTi OER? A Guide to Nature-Based Credits
Updated: 2 hours ago
Are REDD+ and Nature-Based Credits Eligible for SBTi OER?
Updated September 2026. Reflects the final Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 published 11 June 2026. SBTi’s process for recognizing specific instruments is due in Q4 2026; statements about eligibility below describe the Standard’s criteria and should be read as subject to that process.
The short answer
Yes, during the voluntary phase (2027–2035). The Standard defines verified mitigation outcomes to include the protection, restoration and enhancement of natural carbon sinks and emissions reductions outside the value chain, which is what high-quality REDD+ delivers, provided the credits meet third-party high-integrity criteria and SBTi’s minimum integrity criteria.
For 2035, removal credits are required for neutralization, for now. From 2035 Category A companies must support carbon removals, with a rising share of long-lived removals, and residual emissions at net zero must be neutralized with removals. Avoided-emissions credits, including REDD+, do not count there for the current version.
The implication: a credible OER portfolio protects standing forest now and builds toward removals over time, rather than choosing one or the other.
Looking further ahead, an important question remains: how should the ongoing climate value of preventing deforestation be recognized alongside removals at net zero? Reaching net zero will not eliminate the need to prevent new emissions or protect the natural carbon sinks on which a stable climate depends. As the science and carbon markets evolve, this may be an important area for future climate frameworks to examine.
What does SBTi OER allow during the voluntary phase?
Ongoing Emissions Responsibility (OER) is the optional recognition program in SBTi’s Corporate Net-Zero Standard V2.0 for companies that finance climate action covering a defined share of the emissions they still release on the way to net zero. It has three levels (Engaged, Advanced, Leadership), opens for validation on 1 February 2027, and is assessed at the end of each five-year target cycle. For the mechanics, costs and dates, see our companion explainer, SBTi Ongoing Emissions Responsibility (OER) Explained.
For nature-based buyers, the key question is which credits the Standard allows to count toward OER recognition. The basic test is that a credit must be a verified mitigation outcome. SBTi’s key terms define a verified mitigation outcome as a result that has already happened (ex-post) and has been measured and independently checked (verified). Outcomes can come from any of three sources:
cutting emissions outside the company’s own value chain;
protecting, restoring or enhancing natural carbon sinks such as forests; or
removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it.
High-quality REDD+ fits the first two. SBTi does not favor one credit type over another during the voluntary phase. Companies that use a contribution budget can also spend part of it on other climate finance, such as adaptation or low-carbon research (requirement CNZS-C41).
The quality bar is the same whatever the credit type (CNZS-C42). Credits must meet recognized third-party integrity standards, such as the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles, and SBTi’s own minimum criteria. In plain terms, that means:
Conservative quantification: outcomes measured cautiously against a credible, fit-for-purpose baseline.
Additionality: the outcome would not have happened without the finance.
Leakage and reversal safeguards: the problem is not simply pushed elsewhere, and there is protection if carbon is later lost.
Clean accounting: each credit is recorded once on a registry and retired when used.
Independent assurance: results are verified by a third party.
Outcomes must also be recent: generated within the five years before the year the company reports them.
Which credit types count for which requirement?
Credit type | OER recognition, voluntary phase (2027–2035) | 2035 removals requirement (Category A) | Neutralization at net-zero year |
REDD+ / avoided deforestation | Eligible as protection of natural carbon sinks and reductions outside the value chain, subject to integrity criteria and SBTi instrument recognition | Not eligible (not a removal) | Not eligible (not a removal) |
Nature-based removals (ARR, ANR, agroforestry, soil carbon) | Eligible as removals | Eligible as removals; counts toward the non-long-lived share | Eligible; long-lived share requirements increase toward net zero |
Engineered / long-lived removals (biochar, BECCS, DACCS) | Eligible as removals | Eligible; needed for the defined and increasing long-lived share | Eligible; the core of neutralization at scale |
Other reductions outside the value chain (e.g. cookstoves, methane) | Eligible as reductions, subject to integrity criteria | Not eligible | Not eligible |
Non-credit climate finance (R&D, adaptation, loss and damage) | Eligible under the contribution-budget route only | Not eligible | Not eligible |
Note: the split between long-lived and other removals from 2035 will be defined in a future revision of the Standard before 2035. Final eligibility of any instrument under OER depends on SBTi’s recognition process (Q4 2026).
Why does forest protection belong in an OER portfolio now?
Because the Standard’s destination is removals, but its timeline runs through a decade in which tropical forest loss is the more urgent problem and removal supply is not yet there. Three points of evidence:
Timing. UNEP states that all IPCC pathways that keep warming below 1.5°C depend on deforestation falling to net zero by 2030. Emissions avoided this decade cannot be recovered later by removals; they simply add to the removal burden.
Scale of the lever. In launching its FLAG guidance, SBTi noted that 80% of the mitigation potential from land-use change comes from stopping deforestation.
The finance gap. UNEP’s State of Finance for Forests 2025 puts current forest finance at about US$84 billion a year against roughly US$300 billion needed by 2030, an annual gap of about US$216 billion. The constraint is not a shortage of forest needing protection but a shortage of finance reaching credible programs.
Meanwhile the supply of independently verified, long-lived removals remains small and will take years of investment to scale. High-quality REDD+ is one of the few established, performance-based mechanisms that can direct finance to standing tropical forest at meaningful scale today, and it generates verified outcomes immediately, because it avoids emissions before they occur. Waiting for removal supply to mature before financing forest protection risks losing the ecosystems that regulate the climate now.
Even after global net zero is reached, preventing new emissions from deforestation will remain necessary to avoid additional warming and to keep natural sinks functioning.
What makes a REDD+ project OER-ready?
Certification by a recognized carbon standard is the foundation. Buyers preparing for OER are building on the market's baseline requirements by looking at the project itself:
Baseline integrity: fit-for-purpose science-based baselines, jurisdictionally consistent baselines that tighten over time, consistent with current ICVCM-approved methodologies.
Leakage and reversal management: documented drivers of deforestation, activities that address them, buffer contributions and an operational capacity to prevent and respond to reversals.
Land tenure and community governance: clear rights, community co-ownership or consent, and transparent benefit sharing that gives local stewards a lasting reason to keep forest standing.
Operational presence: staff on the ground, monitoring, and a track record of verified issuances.
Clean claims: unique registry recording, retirement on use, no double claiming with host-country accounting where corresponding adjustments are relevant.
Wildlife Works’ Buyer Guide: A New Framework for Evaluating High-Quality Forest Carbon Projects sets out a durability lens built on these factors: community co-ownership, holistic conservation design, equitable baselines, direct revenue distribution and strengthened land rights.
How can REDD+ be combined with nature-based removals?
Because REDD+ satisfies OER recognition today but not the 2035 removals requirement at this time, the practical question for buyers is how to move from one to the other without abandoning forest protection. An integrated landscape approach does this in one connected system:
REDD+ protects intact, high-carbon, high-biodiversity forest, addresses active deforestation drivers and begins generating results-based revenue for communities early.
Afforestation, reforestation and revegetation (ARR) adds active restoration and longer-term removals on degraded land.
Assisted natural regeneration (ANR) helps degraded forest recover by protecting existing seedlings and encouraging native regrowth.
Community agroforestry supports livelihoods, food security and productive land use, reducing pressure to expand into intact forest.
Restoration works better next to protected native forest. Intact forest provides seeds, a milder microclimate and habitat connections for wildlife. It also acts as a buffer against encroachment. Community income and local governance add another layer of protection. When people benefit from the forest, both the emissions reductions and the removals are more likely to last.
The financing works in sequence. Early REDD+ revenues can pay for the expensive start-up phase of restoration (ARR and ANR). As the restored forest grows, it removes more carbon each year. The result for the buyer is a portfolio that delivers over time, rather than one project type or one vintage.
About Wildlife Works. Wildlife Works is developing this model through an Integrated Landscape Management (ILM) platform: connecting high-quality REDD+ today with ARR, ANR and community agroforestry across the same landscapes, so that near-term forest protection and longer-term removal outcomes are financed together.
Should buyers secure nature-based supply before 2027?
There is a reasonable case for it, for two reasons. First, OER recognition is assessed at the end of a five-year cycle and contribution budgets are meant to be disbursed across that cycle, so a company that starts contracting only when recognition is on the line has little time for diligence.
Second, if participation grows, demand for eligible high-integrity outcomes could rise faster than credible supply, which for forest projects can take years of community engagement, tenure clarification, governance, monitoring and verification to bring online.
Two contract structures are especially relevant:
Forward purchase or off-take agreements give conditional access to future issuances, subject to verification, delivery and program eligibility, with better price and volume visibility, and create bankable demand that helps developers finance implementation.
Project investment or ex-ante funding finances implementation before credits are issued, including community engagement, protection, monitoring and restoration.
Contracts should cover methodology and program eligibility, vintage parameters, independent verification, safeguards, benefit-sharing transparency, reversal provisions, delivery remedies, and a clear allocation of claims and environmental attributes. Until SBTi’s recognition process is published, buyers should anchor quality requirements in the ICVCM Core Carbon Principles and, where relevant, the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism.
What should an OER procurement plan include?
Start from the company’s emissions, recognition ambition and climate strategy.
Model ongoing emissions and coverage across the five-year cycle, including scope 3 estimates.
Set the recognition level, budget and delivery route (outcomes, budget, or both).
Document eligibility, additionality, verification, safeguards, durability, benefit-sharing and claims criteria.
Combine verified outcomes with forward purchases or project investment.
Balance REDD+ with ARR, ANR and longer-lived removals so the portfolio matures with the Standard.
Address methodology changes, delivery risk, reversals, remedies and attribute ownership in contracts.
Keep OER accounting separate from target accounting, retire credits on use, and retain evidence for end-of-cycle assurance.
To discuss an OER strategy or long-term partnerships for high-quality REDD+ and integrated landscape investment, contact Wildlife Works.
