The Carbco Platinum Standard for Carbon Offset Certificates is designed to far exceed the level of environmental protection offered by any other carbon standard. The benefits of the Platinum Standard include a range of measures to protect the diversity of plants and animals found within the forest, and the streams, rivers and ecosystems on which they depend.

In addition to these biodiversity criteria, the standard builds strong community benefits in the form of sustainable development of healthcare, education, employment and access to communications to name just a few. The standard is responsive to the aspirations and needs of local populations based on extensive consultations designed to determine the most effective way to assist them in achieving their own aspirations.

The baseline requirement for trading in Voluntary Carbon Offsets is laid down by the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) - the first and largest exchange trading in the voluntary carbon markets. The Platinum Standard has a range of features which go far beyond the benefits of these standard carbon credits, and is built around a core of obligatory components designed to ensure high levels of quality and transparency. These obligatory criteria are supplemented and strengthened by a large range of flexible actions to further protect biodiversity, to assist local development, to provide for local energy needs by sustainable technologies, to prevent or reduce pollution of air land and rivers, to monitor a wide range of data aimed at demonstrating continuing protection of the forest, to provide research information which assists conservation, and to provide meteorological data to increase understanding of climate change. These latter criteria are assessed by a points based system from which a minimum score of 80% is required for a project to qualify as an approved platinum standard project.

The Carbco Platinum Standard is designed to meet the requirements of and so be certifiable to Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) at Gold level. In addition, to these, Platinum Standard projects will provide evidence of additional benefits such as providing publicly available camera and satellite feeds to demonstrate compliance, and actions to maintain and enhance the quality of water in watercourses flowing through the project area.