Dynamic Baselines: A Bedrock of Credibility in Nature-Based Projects
Yesterday's "best practice" is today's essential. Is your project's baseline ready for it?
Sherwood Product Updates
Science & Tech
Project Development
Carbon Credits
Jun 9, 2025
Carolina Amu Trujillo
The world of nature-based carbon projects is constantly evolving. Methodologies update, standards tighten, and what was once "best practice" can quickly become an "essential requirement." One such shift that project developers need to have firmly on their radar is the move towards dynamic performance benchmarks, often referred to as dynamic baselines. If you're developing a nature-based project, understanding and implementing a dynamic baseline isn’t just an advisable step – it's fundamental for credibility and success.
But let's be frank: creating one isn’t always a walk in the park. We've heard it from developers: "We know how to do it," they say, only to find themselves facing roadblocks during validation. This isn't about pointing fingers; it's about acknowledging a common, complex challenge and finding a clearer path forward.
So, what exactly is a dynamic performance benchmark, why is it so crucial, what makes it tricky, and – most importantly – how can we make the process, well, better?
What is a Dynamic Performance Benchmark (and Why Should You Care)?
In simple terms, a dynamic performance benchmark helps to answer a critical question:
what would have happened to the land if your project didn’t exist?
It’s about establishing a realistic "business-as-usual" trajectory by assessing comparable areas of land outside your project's boundary.
Crucially, this isn’t a static one-off picture. It’s “dynamic” because it considers and adapts to changes over time. For instance, at your project’s inception, certain vegetation like shrubs might have grown readily in the region. Twenty years later, due to evolving land management practices or shifting climatic patterns, those same shrubs might struggle. A dynamic baseline reflects these temporal shifts, ensuring the additionality of your project – its true, measurable impact beyond the norm – is accurately captured throughout its lifespan.
Why the big push for this? Because as we have said before, credibility is the currency of the carbon market. Robustly demonstrating that your project is making a genuine, additional difference is vital for securing validation, attracting discerning buyers, and ultimately, ensuring the integrity (and value!) of the carbon credits you generate. Leading standards, like Verra's VM0047 (delve deeper into the methodology and compliance here), now mandate this approach for many Afforestation, Reforestation, and Revegetation (ARR) projects, making it a non-negotiable aspect of project design.
The Hurdles: Why Dynamic Baselines Can Be a Headache
While the concept is clear, its practical execution can present notable challenges:
- Data, data, everywhere (but is it the right data?): Identifying truly comparable "control" or "reference” plots requires careful analysis of various factors – historical land use (a core component of a holistic land use plan), vegetation cover, ecological conditions, and even socio-economic drivers. Sourcing reliable, consistent data for these parameters, often over extended periods, can be a major undertaking.
- Defining "similar": What constitutes a "similar" area? How far afield should you look? What are the acceptable variances? These aren't always easy questions to answer and require robust justification.
- Technical expertise & resources: Let's be honest, this isn't back-of-the-envelope stuff. It demands a certain level of technical know-how in geospatial analysis, remote sensing, and statistical modelling. For many developers, particularly smaller or newer organisations, building this capacity in-house is a significant investment.
- Keeping it dynamic: The "dynamic" part means ongoing monitoring and updating, not just a one-off assessment. This adds to the long-term operational complexity.
The result? Developers can find the validation process stalling, timelines stretching, and costs escalating – all because the baseline wasn't as robust or defensible as required.
Making Dynamic Baselines Better: Treeconomy’s Approach to Clear, Accurate, and Trustworthy Results
So, if creating dynamic baselines can be complex, how do we make them more straightforward and reliable? It boils down to using the best information in the smartest way. Your project’s success relies on showing exactly how much extra carbon it’s capturing compared to what would have happened otherwise. The more accurately we can measure the biomass (the trees, plants, and organic matter) and how it changes, the stronger your project’s story becomes.
At Treeconomy, we focus on three key ways to build a better, more dependable dynamic baseline for you:
1. Getting a truer picture of biomass - beyond general guesses
Imagine trying to guess the “weight” of a forest. Some older methods use proxies – things that suggest biomass rather than measuring it directly. These can be like using a very general rule of thumb that might work okay in some places but isn’t very accurate for your specific project, with its unique mix of trees and local conditions. These one-size-fits-all models can miss the mark, especially if they don’t truly fit your area’s environment.
We take a more direct route. Our advanced methods aim to estimate the actual amount of biomass (the Above Ground Biomass or AGB) from the get-go. This gives us a much clearer and more realistic starting point. By checking these estimates with real data from the ground, we build more confidence in the numbers, ensuring they truly reflect what’s happening in your project.
2. Creating a “digital twin” of your project area – tailored for your land
Every project site is unique. That’s why we create a “biomass digital twin” – think of it as a detailed digital copy of the trees and vegetation specific to your baseline areas. We start by getting a big-picture view using satellite information. Then, the really important part: we zoom in and add the specific details from your project. This includes on-the-ground measurements your team might collect and highly detailed measurements from drones.
By combining these different views – the broad picture from space and the fine details from your land – our model becomes tailor-made for your project. It’s calibrated to your local conditions, which means more accuracy, less guesswork, and more reliable forecasts of how biomass will change over your project's life. The real improvement in accuracy comes from tuning our system with your specific project information.
3. Smart data sources – getting you reliable results, faster
We know that time is valuable. To build your baseline, we can use reliable global information (like land cover maps or data on deforestation risk) – similar to what other providers might use. However, we can also blend this local information that you, the developer, provide. This flexibility means we’re always using the best possible data for your specific project. This smart approach often allows us to deliver your baseline results more quickly, frequently within 7 working days if we have the necessary data for your country.
The goal isn't just to tick a box for compliance. It’s to construct a baseline that is demonstrably more accurate, highly defensible, and truly reflective of your project's positive impact. This isn't about "predicting" growth where it can't be seen; it's about robust modelling grounded in solid data and science. Sometimes, you just need the facts, and our statistical models, validated by on-the-ground measurements, are designed to provide just that.
Quality Baselines, Quality Credits, Better Returns
While the rigour of dynamic baselines might seem like an added complexity, it represents a significant step towards greater transparency and credibility in the voluntary carbon market – a shift that ultimately benefits high-quality projects. And this quality has a tangible upside.
A meticulously constructed, defensible dynamic baseline underpins the integrity of your carbon credits. It provides buyers with greater assurance of the additionality and impact of your project. This enhanced trust and reduced risk can translate directly into stronger demand and potentially higher prices per credit for you, the project developer. Investing in a high-quality baseline isn't an expense that diminishes credit quantity; it's an investment in the quality and marketability of every credit you issue.
Beyond the Baseline: The Path to Project Success
Dynamic performance benchmarks are a critical piece of the puzzle, but they are just one part of the journey to developing a high-quality, successful high-impact nature-based carbon project (a journey we explore in more detail here). From initial site eligibility assessments and detailed carbon projections to continuous, robust monitoring and successfully connecting with carbon credit buyers, each step requires diligence, expertise and the right strategic support.
Navigating the complexities of dynamic baselines for your project? Facing the challenges of demonstrating true additionality? Get in touch. Let’s discuss how Treeconomy’s Dynamic Performance Benchmark assessment, can empower your validation process and help you build a carbon project that stands out for its integrity, quality and impact.
