In today’s conservation landscape, we have finally moved from the question of if we should leverage carbon markets to tackle climate change, to how we scale them to maximize impact. While this is major progress, we are still challenged with building markets that can provide assurance to all stakeholders that credits bought and sold retain their value long enough to meaningfully benefit the climate. 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.  

The American Forest Foundation has worked for years on tackling this issue. 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.  

So how did we get here? And what learning already exists that shows promise that a market-wide entity like the Permanence Trust could work? 

 The Permanence Fund 

We had a vested interest in ensuring long-term durability of forest carbon credits from the Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP). Through market testing and program implementation, we found that most family forest landowners were unwilling to sign carbon contracts lasting over 20 years, concerned that longer timeframes would restrict their heirs’ ability to manage the forests and deftly respond to changing health, wildlife, and sustainable timber production variables down the line. Even then, landowner contracts alone do not fully ensure permanence, as they cannot protect against disturbances outside of landowners’ control. This highlights a major gap: how can the market credibly account for century-plus scale carbon storage when contractual responsibility is shorter and limited in the reversals it can prevent? In response, AFF launched a Permanence Fund in 2024 to backstop non-permanence risk beyond individual contract periods. 

The FFCP Permanence Fund is designed as a long-term financial reserve that grows each time FFCP receives proceeds from the credits it generates. Its purpose is to: 

 Similar project-level, fund-based mechanisms to address non-permanence risk exist around the world. In March 2026, Soil Capital launched their own Permanence Fund, which reduces reversals in soil carbon projects by investing a portion of the revenue generated by these projects into a fund that pays farmers to continue their carbon projects beyond the crediting period. Plan Vivo also operates their Trees for Global Benefits program (TGB) in Uganda, which compensates farmers and communities for implementing climate friendly land use practices on an ongoing basis. 

These are just two examples of a growing handful of fund-based approaches we learned about, but they show that others are seeing the same problem we do and coming to similar solutions. While these programs are promising, a single-organization solution does not address a systemic, market-wide gap. Which brings us to the Permanence Trust. 

The Evolution of the Permanence Trust 

In January 2024, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (IC-VCM) convened a workshop with participants across science, finance, policy, and project development at Cambridge University to confront the shared challenge of managing non-permanence risk. There, the FFCP project-level Permanence Fund idea evolved into a broader, market-wide infrastructure concept that could operate across project types and geographies, serving as an enduring institution for managing long-term non-permanence risk: the Permanence Trust. Cambridge, itself an institution associated with centuries of continuity, served as an appropriate symbolic backdrop for this shift in thinking, reinforcing the need for a mechanism designed not just for project timelines but for the long arc of atmospheric carbon stability. 

Since that workshop at Cambridge, AFF has been working to lay the groundwork for this market-wide structure of the Permanence Trust. This has included publishing a preliminary concept paper; initiating a feasibility study in collaboration with Kita and Climate Resilient Solutions; convening an advisory group of carbon market leaders and experts to support the feasibility study; engaging broader carbon market stakeholders through webinars and events; and advocating with policymakers to help create the enabling conditions needed for such a mechanism to function. 

Looking ahead, AFF’s goal is to develop a pilot program by 2027 to further test and demonstrate the value of a Permanence Trust with a true portfolio approach. The pilot will hopefully validate that we can operationalize assurance of policy-relevant lengths of durability at a systems level and ultimately contribute to stronger, more credible climate outcomes. 

Amid all this planning, analysis, and attention to detail, we remain grounded in the bigger picture: climate change is accelerating rapidly and demands urgent, large-scale action. Based on our experience with the FFCP Permanence Fund, along with research and input from external experts, we believe the Permanence Trust can be a powerful tool to strengthen the carbon market and unlock greater investment into carbon dioxide removal and emission reductions in the near term.  

At the same time, we recognize this is a complex challenge that will not be solved by any single mechanism but will require a broader toolkit of complementary approaches. AFF’s commitment to this issue is rooted in our mission to deliver meaningful conservation impact through the empowerment of family forest owners, recognizing that landowners who have a deep connection to their woods have a pivotal role to play in climate change mitigation. 

If you have questions about the Permanence Trust or ideas on how it could be implemented, we welcome you to reach out at permtrust@forestfoundation.org.