More than 274 million improved forest management credits have entered the voluntary carbon market since 2008, and Relae and Microsoft now say a large share of them rests on methodologies too weak to verify. The two companies have published a science-based framework for designing and evaluating high-quality IFM credits, aimed at developers and buyers who want more than the registry minimum.

The paper organizes its requirements around three areas: baselines and additionality, leakage risk, and community impact. For each area it supplies practical tools. The authors position the document as a bridge between minimum registry requirements and what high-quality credits actually demand as the IFM sector scales.

Why does the IFM sector need new criteria?

The numbers explain the timing. The 1,056 IFM projects issued since 2008 account for 29% of all forestry and land-use credits in the voluntary market. IFM is one of the fastest-scaling credit types. Scale has outpaced quality controls.

Improved forest management means managing existing forests so they store more CO2 while continuing to produce timber. The practices include extending harvest rotations, reducing logging intensity, and enhancing riparian buffer protection. Credits follow from the incremental carbon storage.

The problem sits in the accounting. Baselines determine how much carbon a project can claim. If the baseline is wrong, the additionality claim collapses with it.

What does the framework change?

On baselines and additionality, the paper treats the two as inseparable. The way a project measures its baseline determines whether its additionality claim is credible. The framework gives developers tools to link the two rather than treat them as separate exercises.

On leakage, the authors call for assessment through practical, individualized, evidence-based indicators. Leakage risk should not be left to inconsistent and unreliable methodologies, the paper states. In other words, generic default factors do not satisfy the framework.

On community impact, the framework classifies it as a defining risk in industrial IFM projects. Projects that lack meaningful engagement and benefit-sharing leave buyers unable to verify whether the initiative harms local communities. The paper supplies tools to close that verification gap.

What did Microsoft say?

Phillip Goodman, Director of the Carbon Removal Portfolio at Microsoft, framed the framework as a response to the credibility deficit in the sector.

"Working forests can make a meaningful contribution to carbon removal, but only if projects address the challenges that have historically limited confidence in improved forest management projects," Goodman said.

"This paper gives developers practical guidance on baselines, additionality, leakage, and social outcomes, helping chart a path for projects to verifiably sequester carbon dioxide and maintain productive working forests," he added.

Microsoft's involvement matters for demand. The company operates one of the largest carbon removal portfolios in the market, and its procurement standards influence what developers build and how registries respond. Relae and Microsoft previously published high-quality CDR criteria that addressed delivery risk for the first time; the new paper extends that work to the forest management segment.

What happens next?

The framework is voluntary. Registries are not bound to adopt it, and no filing or permit obliges developers to follow it. Its leverage will come through procurement.

If buyers with large portfolios apply the baseline, leakage, and community impact tests to new IFM issuances, developers will have to meet them to sell. If the tests filter out a meaningful share of the 29% of forestry and land-use credits that IFM now represents, the sector faces a quality reckoning rather than continued volume growth.

The milestone to watch is uptake. Watch whether major registries incorporate the framework's indicators into revised IFM methodologies, and whether Microsoft's own purchase agreements begin citing the paper's requirements by name. Those two signals, not the publication itself, will decide whether 1,056 projects and 274 million credits get measured against a stricter standard.