The CORE Framework for Carbon Removal

As the carbon removal field continues to grow, so does the imperative to design safe, beneficial projects and programs that serve our communities, ecosystems, and climate. This need led us to create the Community-Informed, Open Access, Reviewed, and Evaluated (CORE) Framework — a living reference that addresses longstanding barriers to scaling just, equitable, and highly accountable carbon removal. CORE was created to help guide decisions while the CDR field is still emerging, before theory becomes deployment, to ensure those most impacted have a meaningful role in shaping the outcomes. Rather than treating justice, equity, and climate integrity as separate conversations, the CORE framework integrates them. Each principle and practice is designed to respond directly to risks like governance failures, capacity gaps, misaligned incentives, climate accounting weaknesses, and environmental or health burdens.

The framework was built through an ongoing collaboration that drew on:

• Engagement with land and ocean stewards, practitioners, policymakers, and communities,
• Research across environmental justice, climate policy, carbon accounting, and governance,
• Lessons from existing environmental and community benefit frameworks,
• Analysis of historical failures in climate and infrastructure deployment, and
• Technical literature on carbon accounting, durability, monitoring, and reversal risk.

It’s written for anyone with a stake in how the carbon removal field grows and scales. It provides common language and templates that ease collaboration so that anyone can feel ready to engage. It has been developed for community members trying to understand and get involved with a proposed project down the road from their house. For land and ocean stewards weighing whether their participation is worth the investment. For purchasers deciding which credits are worth buying. For policymakers drafting programs. For implementers planning projects. And for funders weighing where their money goes. Our aim is for different perspectives within the field to share the same baseline: here’s what it means when we say carbon removal is done right.

As the carbon removal field matures, so will this framework — guided by science, shaped by lived experience, and accountable to both communities and the climate. We welcome feedback from communities, land and ocean stewards, implementers, policymakers, researchers, funders, and others engaging with this work.

Acess the CORE Framework here: https://carbon180.org/initiative/core-framework/