Which social and environmental safeguards must a project confirm in its design document under the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) rules?
The project owner must assess risks against seven safeguard areas: labour rights, pollution and resource use, land and resettlement, biodiversity, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, human rights, and gender equality. The validated design document confirms whether each risk arises and, where it does, the measures taken, and the monitoring report reports on them.
The process (criterion 7.1)
- Abide by national and local laws, objectives, programs and regulations and, where relevant, international conventions.
- Assess the risk of negative environmental and social impacts under the safeguards below, taking into account the scope and scale of the project.
- Run free, prior and informed consent processes for Indigenous Peoples and local communities where applicable, and consult local stakeholders as part of design and delivery.
- Where a risk is found, include measures in proportion to it in the validated design document before registration, and report on them in the monitoring report.
The safeguard areas and what the design document confirms
- Labour rights: safe and healthy conditions, fair treatment and equal opportunity, and no forced labour, child labour or trafficked persons, with contracted workers protected.
- Resource efficiency and pollution: minimise air pollutants, discharges to water, noise, vibration, waste and hazardous materials, chemical pesticides and fertilisers.
- Land acquisition and resettlement: avoid or minimise forced physical or economic displacement.
- Biodiversity: minimise damage to ecosystems, protect habitats of rare, threatened and endangered species, no conversion of natural forests, grasslands, wetlands or high conservation value habitats, and minimise soil erosion and water stress.
- Indigenous Peoples, local communities and cultural heritage, where the project affects them.
- Human rights and stakeholder engagement: avoid discrimination and respond to local stakeholders' views.
- Gender equality: equal opportunities, protection against violence against women and girls, and equal pay for equal work.
Other items in the same table
- Benefit-sharing with Indigenous Peoples and local communities, where the program requires it: a plan shared in a form, manner and language they understand.
- Consistency with the Cancun Safeguards for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) activities, meaning forest activities that reduce those emissions or conserve and enhance forest carbon stocks.
- Positive impacts on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), assessed qualitatively and excluding SDG 13, with information on the host country's SDG objectives.
Older credits
The framework says credits issued in the past might not have been subject to these more advanced program-level criteria, so it also sets baseline category-level safeguard and sustainable development criteria for all credits.
What Senseible does here
Senseible does not assess safeguards or run stakeholder consultations. It reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records only.
- Stakeholder meeting rules at Gold Standard
- SDG 13 plus two other goals at Gold Standard
- What Verra's nine attributes cover
- Carbon credits for Indian businesses
Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Based on Assessment Framework version 1.1 (January 2024). The Integrity Council's August 2026 rule architecture says Interpretations and Technical Notices may affect how criteria are assessed, so check icvcm.org for any in effect before you rely on a detail.