LAND-BASED CARBON RIGHTS AND ENDURING LAND OBLIGATIONS

Governments can establish who has the authority to undertake a land-based carbon project and how its land-management obligations survive changes of owner, tenant or project operator. The rules can recognise a separate carbon right where useful, or let parties use existing leases, contracts and conservation covenants. A covenant is a legally enforceable commitment concerning how land is managed; where legislation allows it to bind successors, a sale need not end the duty. Registration and clear consent requirements connect the project to the people entitled to make decisions about the land. For forestry, soil carbon and other land-based removals, this can make access, monitoring and continuing stewardship legally credible. The lever governs rights and duties attached to land, rather than ownership of an already issued carbon credit or rights to geological pore space.

The law should distinguish the right to enter and manage land, the right to receive credits, the duties owed after a reversal, and the interests of owners, tenants and customary rights-holders. These may belong to different people. A carbon-right instrument must specify the activities, area, duration and claims it authorises; it should not silently transfer unrelated rights to water, biodiversity or traditional knowledge. The land register and carbon-project register should identify the same area and disclose restrictions without exposing confidential cultural information. Designers must determine which obligations bind a successor, what happens when a lease ends or a lender enforces security, and who can inspect the land or seek a remedy. Existing legal instruments should be used where they work. Creating a new property right is justified only where ordinary contracts and land obligations leave a material gap.

Clear rights can support longer contracts and make suitable land more usable for removal projects, while allowing an unsuitable or contested parcel to be excluded before expenditure escalates. A landholder and project developer can negotiate a defined arrangement instead of relying on an uncertain assertion that ownership of the surface includes every carbon-related entitlement. Tenants and communities with recognised or customary interests can make their own rights visible before a project is registered. Recording continuing obligations gives purchasers and lenders notice of restrictions and reduces the risk that a project sale leaves monitoring or stewardship without a responsible actor. Conservation bodies can hold and enforce agreements across changes in project ownership.

A new carbon right can entrench an unfair land claim if the underlying tenure has never been resolved. A signature obtained from a formal titleholder may leave tenants, Indigenous Peoples or customary users exposed to restrictions they did not authorise. Long agreements can limit future livelihoods after the original credit revenue has been spent, particularly where payment ends before stewardship duties do. An agreement may also fail on foreclosure, subdivision or lease expiry if its legal priority is unclear. Weakly funded covenant holders can disappear or decline to enforce duties. Legal continuity does not eliminate fire, drought or other reversal risks, and an enduring obligation should not be presented as proof that biological storage is physically permanent.

Land and carbon authorities should reconcile project boundaries, registered rights and responsible parties, and examine whether sales, lease changes or operator failures leave obligations unenforceable. Evaluation should record contested claims, consent defects, successor notifications, inspection access and remedies actually used. A covenant holder should report whether required management continues and whether sufficient resources remain for monitoring and enforcement. Repeated disputes about the same form of tenure or priority should trigger a change in documentation or law. Carbon-stock measurement remains necessary, but legal performance should be assessed separately from the tonnes a project reports.

Land registries and property-law authorities should determine what can be recorded, its legal priority and how purchasers discover it. Carbon regulators should specify the project authority and continuing duties needed for registration and crediting. Landowners, tenants, Indigenous representative bodies and customary users should identify overlapping rights and negotiate through representatives they recognise, with independent advice where needed. Lenders and insurers can test whether obligations survive foreclosure and project failure. Conservation charities and other qualified covenant holders should demonstrate the resources and independence needed to monitor and enforce commitments over their stated duration.

National and regional legislatures can define land rights, registration and successor obligations according to their property-law powers. Local authorities can implement authorised land agreements and, where eligible, hold and enforce covenants. Corporate landholders and conservation organisations can establish agreements under that law. Charitable conservation bodies can take the continuing enforcement role, rather than merely fund another actor. England’s conservation-covenant arrangements expressly allow local authorities, qualifying charities and qualifying private organisations to become designated responsible bodies. None can extinguish another person’s rights through a private agreement to which that person is not bound.