“Over the years we’ve invested significantly in our field data team - focusing on producing trusted ratings. While this ensures the accuracy of our Ratings, it doesn’t allow the scale across the thousands of projects that buyers are considering.”
For more information on carbon credit procurement trends, read our "Key Takeaways for 2025" article. We share five, data-backed tips to improve your procurement strategy.
One more thing: Connect to Supply customers also get access to the rest of Sylvera's tools. That means you can easily see project ratings and evaluate an individual project's strengths, procure quality carbon credits, and even monitor project activity (particularly if you’ve invested at the pre-issuance stage.)
Book a free demo of Sylvera to see our platform's procurement and reporting features in action.
Improved Forest Management (IFM) has become one of the most significant and scrutinised project types in the carbon market.
By changing how existing forests are managed - extending harvest rotations, reducing logging intensity, restoring degraded stands - IFM projects can meaningfully increase carbon storage while keeping working forests working.
Unlike planting new trees or stopping deforestation entirely, IFM operates within commercial forestry landscapes, making it scalable in ways that few other nature-based approaches can match.
IFM credit issuances have doubled since 2022, and have accounted for 61% of nature-based issuances so far in 2026. North America leads in quality supply, with the majority of its rated issuances achieving investment-grade (BBB+) Sylvera ratings, supported by an average credit price of around $16, among the highest of any project type.
As CORSIA Phase 1 compliance approaches, IFM's eligibility profile is another tailwind, as it features prominently in the growing wave of CORSIA-eligible supply that now represents close to half of all new issuances.
But supply growth alone doesn't tell the full story. Legacy IFM has long carried integrity concerns - around baseline inflation, weak additionality, and leakage. Buyers operating under tightening standards (CSRD, SBTi, ICVCM's Core Carbon Principles) are applying far greater scrutiny than they once did.
Next-generation methodologies like Verra's VM0045 and ACR IFM v2.1 are raising the floor, and Sylvera's updated IFM framework acknowledges these recent moves in the sector.
What's new in Sylvera’s updated IFM framework?
Download the IFM Ratings Framework V2.0 here
1. Carbon
The most significant update to the carbon pillar is the integration of Sylvera's proprietary Biomass Atlas - a dataset that enables direct comparison of project-reported carbon stock changes against independently observed changes in woody biomass within the project boundary. Biomass growth and biomass loss are both assessed, with uncertainty quantified at the project level by combining sampling uncertainty and residual pixel-level prediction errors.
Rather than relying on a single baseline model, the framework compares reported baselines against a plausibility range of independently observed biomass loss across multiple appropriate proxy areas, a holistic approach that accounts for data and model uncertainty while providing a fairer reflection of genuine over-crediting risk.
2. Additionality
The additionality update introduces meaningful differentiation between IFM project types. Sylvera's framework now distinguishes between avoided-logging projects - where additionality hinges on demonstrating that the baseline harvest scenario was likely to occur - and removals-only projects, where the bar shifts to demonstrating a clear behaviour change that can be linked to increasing carbon stocks.
The key upgrade is the move from a qualitative activity-change assessment to an IRR-based financial additionality test. Where a financial model is available, Sylvera compares the project's internal rate of return both with and without carbon revenue against an appropriate hurdle rate, testing whether project activities are only viable with carbon finance rather than simply asserting it.
3. Permanence
For IFM, permanence risk is grounded in what can actually be observed, not just modelled. Natural risk assessment - covering fire, storm, drought, pest, and flood - is now cross-validated using Biomass Atlas data to confirm the extent of any reported carbon stock reversals and to identify unreported losses. Anthropogenic risk is assessed across project team experience and capacity, country-level geopolitical context, land tenure, and design complexity.
The overall approach is scenario-based: starting from whether reversals have occurred and whether they are significant and mitigated, the framework maps a path to a risk score that reflects the real-world durability of the project's carbon stocks.
4. Safeguarding & co-benefits
The updated co-benefits pillar introduces community safeguarding requirements aligned with the latest NBS frameworks, evaluating seven themes - including community engagement, benefit sharing, human rights, labour rights, land rights, grievance redress, and gender equality - based on whether disclosed mitigations are genuine and sufficient, not simply present.
Biodiversity assessment incorporates IUCN Red List data, Key Biodiversity Area overlaps, and species threat abatement potential to identify where IFM activities carry the greatest ecological significance. SDG contributions are now mapped to verifiable project activities, consistent with the evidence-based approach Sylvera has applied across its updated NBS frameworks.
Why it matters now
IFM supply is growing, compliance demand is accelerating, and buyer expectations - driven by CSRD, SBTi V2, and the ICVCM's CCP framework - are rising in parallel. That combination makes independent, rigorous assessment more important than ever. A credit that passes registry standards but falls short on baseline plausibility, or claims additionality without a credible financial case, carries real risk for the buyers who hold it.
Sylvera's updated IFM framework is designed to cut through that noise - providing buyers with a transparent, data-grounded view of where projects stand, and giving developers a clearer benchmark to work toward.
Download the IFM Ratings Framework V2.0 here
