Understanding VM0047: The New ARR Methodology
Verra's latest methodology for Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation. What changed, what stayed the same, and what it means if you're developing a project.
We develop carbon and biodiversity projects that work. Multifunctional landscapes that regenerate ecosystems, support communities, and generate lasting value. We take degraded land and turn it into productive, resilient systems.
Carbon project development is complicated. Different registries, methodologies, requirements, timelines. We help you cut through the noise and build projects that meet the highest standards.
Full lifecycle support from early feasibility through credit issuance. We work across ARR, Agroforestry, and REDD+ (AUDD and APDD).
Established networks across South East Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. We source, screen, and develop land opportunities from the ground up.
The December 2026 deadline is approaching. We help commodity producers and traders demonstrate deforestation-free supply chains.
PhD-level technical expertise on every project. We bring rigorous analysis to complex land and carbon questions.
We design landscapes that stack multiple value streams. Carbon alongside biodiversity, commodities, and community benefits.
We're building in-house expertise, technology, and data pipelines for the emerging biodiversity and nature credit markets.
Each registry has its own requirements, timelines, and quirks. We've worked across them and know what it takes to get projects through.
Different land situations call for different approaches. Degraded land? That's ARR or agroforestry. Standing forest under threat? REDD+ might be the path. We help you figure out what makes sense for your specific context.
The methodology choice matters. It affects your baseline, your credit volume, your monitoring requirements, and ultimately your project economics. We've seen projects fail because the wrong approach was chosen upfront.
Afforestation, Reforestation, Revegetation. Planting trees on degraded or non-forest land. Removal credits.
Integrating trees into agricultural landscapes. Coffee under shade, timber with crops. Productive and restorative.
Avoided Unplanned Deforestation and Degradation. Protecting forests from encroachment and illegal logging.
Avoided Planned Deforestation. When forest is slated for conversion, changing that trajectory.
Carbon credits are one revenue stream. But well-designed landscapes can generate much more: sustainable commodities, biodiversity credits, watershed services, ecotourism.
We design projects that stack multiple value streams. This makes them more resilient economically and more impactful ecologically. A coffee agroforestry system that also generates carbon credits, supports pollinators, and protects a watershed is worth more than any single-purpose system.
We're developing in-house expertise, technology, and data pipelines for emerging biodiversity and nature credit markets. The infrastructure we're building today will position our projects for these new value streams as they mature.
We work with landowners, developers, investors, and NGOs. If you have land or a project in mind, we'd like to hear about it.
"The universe tends toward disorder. Life is the exception. It creates order, builds complexity, generates structure. This is syntropy."
We're not facing one crisis. We're facing many, and they're all connected. Climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, food insecurity, social fragmentation. These are symptoms of the same underlying problem: we've disconnected ourselves from the natural systems that sustain us.
Rising temperatures, extreme weather, shifting seasons. Agriculture and ecosystems are struggling to adapt.
A million species at risk of extinction. Ecosystems are losing the diversity that makes them resilient.
Forests, wetlands, and soils are losing their capacity to provide the services we depend on.
Degraded lands, unpredictable weather, collapsing pollinators. Food systems are under pressure.
Communities displaced, traditional knowledge lost, cultural connections to land severed.
Natural systems are losing their ability to self-regulate and recover from disturbance.
These crises can't be solved in isolation. If you address climate without thinking about biodiversity, you end up with single-species plantations that provide limited ecological value. If you protect nature without involving communities, you create conflict. Sustainable development without healthy ecosystems is an illusion.
Entropy is the tendency toward disorder. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Everything decays, dissipates, falls apart.
Syntropy is life's counter-force. The term was first described by mathematician Luigi Fantappiè and later developed by Albert Szent-Györgyi (the Nobel laureate who discovered Vitamin C). It describes life's tendency to build, organize, and create complexity.
A forest is syntropic. It takes scattered resources (sunlight, water, minerals) and organizes them into towering complexity. It builds soil, creates habitat, regulates water, captures carbon. It turns chaos into order. That's what we mean by "building toward natural order."
When we design landscapes syntropically, we work with nature's tendency to organize. We don't fight succession, we accelerate it. We don't impose external order, we create conditions for natural order to emerge.
Ernst Götsch, a Swiss farmer in Brazil, has spent decades applying these ideas practically. He calls it "syntropic agriculture," a regenerative approach that mimics natural forest succession. His degraded cattle pastures became productive agroforests yielding cocoa, bananas, and timber while regenerating soil and biodiversity.
This isn't just farming. It's applied ecology. And it's the foundation of how we approach carbon project design.
We don't just develop carbon projects. We design regenerating landscapes that happen to generate carbon credits among many other benefits.
Natural ecosystems follow successional pathways from pioneer species to climax communities. Instead of fighting this process, we design projects that accelerate it. Fast-growing pioneers create conditions for longer-lived species.
Every element should serve multiple purposes. A nitrogen-fixing tree provides shade, fixes nutrients, produces mulch, sequesters carbon, and hosts pollinators. Design for stacking, not single-purpose infrastructure.
Nature doesn't have waste. Outputs from one process become inputs for another. Our project designs minimize external inputs and maximize internal cycling.
The boundaries between systems (forest and field, land and water) are the most productive zones. We design for productive edges: riparian buffers, hedgerows, transitional zones.
Communities have evolved sophisticated understanding of their landscapes over generations. Scientific tools complement but don't replace this knowledge. Species selection, planting calendars, and management practices should integrate both.
Climate action that ignores justice isn't sustainable. Carbon projects that extract value from communities while leaving them no better off replicate colonial patterns.
We design for equitable transformation:
We see landscapes where carbon finance catalyzes regeneration. Degraded lands become healthy ecosystems. Communities prosper through sustainable livelihoods. Biodiversity returns. And the systems we create endure beyond any project timeline. This is syntropy in action: building natural order from fragmentation and decay.
We partner with landowners, investors, and implementation organizations. If this approach resonates, let's talk.
Carbon project development is complex. Different registries, methodologies, requirements, stakeholders. We help you navigate all of it.
We handle the technical work so you can focus on implementation. From initial land assessment through credit issuance, we provide the analysis, documentation, and registry support you need. Every project is different, and we tailor our approach accordingly.
We have established networks across South East Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. If you're looking for land opportunities, we can help source, screen, and develop potential sites from the ground up. We handle the on-ground coordination so you don't have to.
The December 2026 deadline is approaching. We help commodity producers and traders set up the systems they need to demonstrate deforestation-free supply chains. Satellite monitoring, traceability, and documentation.
PhD-level technical expertise for complex land and carbon questions. We provide rigorous spatial analysis, carbon modeling, and monitoring system design.
We help you design landscapes that do more than sequester carbon. How do you stack carbon credits with biodiversity benefits? How do you integrate sustainable commodities? How do you structure community benefit sharing? We work through these questions with you.
Tell us what you're working on. We'll let you know how we can help.
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Welcome to EarthOS!
We write about carbon markets, land science, policy updates, and methodology. Stuff we think is useful to know.
Verra's latest methodology for Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation. What changed, what stayed the same, and what it means if you're developing a project.
Recent regulatory developments across the region and what they mean for project developers.
Breaking down what you need to do before December 2026, and in what order.
How we use satellite imagery and GIS analysis to establish baselines for carbon projects.
Why removal credits command premium pricing and what that means for project selection.
If you can't demonstrate additionality, you don't have a carbon project. Here's how to think about it.