Relae Releases New Framework for High-Quality Improved Forest Management, in Collaboration with Microsoft

New paper delivers innovative science-based frameworks for designing and evaluating high-quality IFM credits across baselines and additionality, leakage accounting, and social impacts

NEW YORK – October 8, 2026 Today, Relae (formerly Carbon Direct) released a new framework in collaboration with Microsoft defining high-quality improved forest management (IFM) on US industrial timberlands, spanning baselines, additionality, leakage accounting, and social design. The framework provides developers and buyers concrete tools to close the gap between minimum registry requirements and what high-quality credits actually demand as IFM is scaling in the voluntary carbon market and methodologies are advancing.

IFM is the practice of managing existing forests so they store more carbon while continuing to produce timber, including by extending harvest rotations, reducing logging intensity, or enhancing riparian buffer protection. It's one of the fastest-scaling credit categories in the voluntary carbon market: since 2008, 1,056 projects have issued over 274 million credits, representing 29% of all forestry and land-use credits. IFM credit retirements grew approximately 118% between 2023 and 2025, signaling accelerating buyer demand.

However, IFM has faced scrutiny. Many early projects were criticized for overestimating their climate impact or exploiting gaps in methodology that allowed overcrediting. And, because most industrial timberland is privately owned, projects rarely face the level of stakeholder engagement or community consultation requirements that apply to publicly regulated land uses or other forest carbon projects that operate under different registry or protocol requirements, and some registry standards require no social design elements at all.

This new framework addresses these issues and more, giving developers and buyers a path beyond minimum compliance to what high-quality IFM actually demands, so the market has the credibility it needs to scale.

"We are at an exciting moment for IFM's potential, and this new framework is situated to help set the stage for high-quality projects that can deliver," said Dr. Letty Brown, Director, Forest Science, Relae. "Methodologies are advancing in important ways, and better accounting frameworks means building more credibility that is critical for IFM to scale. IFM can deliver tens of millions of tonnes of near-term climate benefit, but only if the credits are real and projects account for the potential impacts to communities and workers embedded in forest-dependent economies. This framework gives developers and buyers a way to meet that higher standard now, without waiting for requirements to catch up."

 “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,” said Phillip Goodman, Director, Carbon Removal Portfolio at Microsoft. “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.”

The framework is organized around three focus areas, each paired with practical tools for developers and buyers:

1. Baselines and additionality are the foundation of IFM crediting, and the two must be linked, because how a project measures its baseline determines whether its additionality claim actually holds up.
   
2. Leakage risk must be assessed through practical, individualized, evidence-based indicators, not left to inconsistent methodologies that could miss a project's real risk.
   
3. Community impact is a defining risk in industrial IFM projects, and without meaningful engagement and benefit-sharing, buyers cannot verify whether a project is harming the very communities it operates within. 

The framework gives every IFM participant a clearer path forward. Buyers who price transparent baselines, conservative leakage accounting, and meaningful social design into what they pay create the demand signal that drives quality improvement. Developers who invest in robust data and proactive community engagement build the trust that sustains long-term project viability. And registries, whose methodologies set the floor, not the ceiling, for what high-quality IFM demands, can raise the bar further by strengthening standards and data transparency requirements.

This paper builds on six consecutive annual publications of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), jointly released by Relae and Microsoft, along with Relae's companion guidance on sustainable agriculture and forestry biomass sourcing for CDR buyers, which were also developed in collaboration with Microsoft.

Read Improved Forest Management: Progress, Challenges, Opportunities at Relae.co 

About Relae

Relae is the trusted energy and climate advisor, delivering scientifically rigorous, technically advanced, and commercially grounded solutions. Our scientists, engineers, and policy experts pair systems-level knowledge with project-level understanding to help clients achieve their energy and climate goals. Founded in 2020 as Carbon Direct, Relae has supported over 150 companies, including Microsoft, Mitsubishi, and JPMorganChase, in navigating today's most pressing challenges across energy systems, greenhouse gas emissions accounting, carbon markets, climate policy, natural capital, environmental markets, and emerging technologies. To learn more, visit relae.co.