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What will the voluntary carbon market look like in 2028 – and how can CSOs prepare?

A recent ICJ ruling has the potential to trigger a chain of events that changes the way the voluntary carbon market operates.
Simon Heppner
What will the voluntary carbon market look like in 2028 – and how can CSOs prepare?
Photo by drmakete lab on Unsplash

The voluntary carbon market (VCM) has traditionally been seen as the place for companies to go beyond compliance and demonstrate climate leadership by investing in projects beyond their value chain that remove or avoid GHG emissions, while delivering SDG-aligned co-benefits. For years, its use was framed as an act of goodwill; a way for companies to live their values, demonstrate corporate social responsibility and differentiate the brand.

But the landscape is shifting fast and a July 2025 ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has the potential to accelerate this trend. The ICJ case and ruling focused on the legal obligations of wealthy nations under existing treaties to curb global warming, and while this may have been explicitly about relations between states, the implications for the private sector are profound. By recognising climate harm as a matter of treaty-based legal obligation and by accepting the science of emissions attribution, the court has paved the way for a new era, where climate responsibility is no longer a voluntary gesture but much more closely bound up with financial and legal liabilities.

The foundation of an effective climate strategy will remain measurement and reduction, but our expectation at Ecologi is that this fundamental shift in the way action is perceived will have the greatest consequences for the VCM: by 2028 this will be operating as a high-integrity, partially regulated market, used as much for legal and financial risk management as for reputational leadership.

Private sector consequences from the ICJ ruling

While the recent ICJ ruling applies to states, it will trigger a chain of events with private sector consequences. 

  • States will be liable for damages and seek compensation: Governments facing financial liability for climate harm may look to their largest corporate emitters to share the burden, through taxation, regulatory levies, or direct legal claims.
  • Courts witnessing state rulings will apply the principles more widely: If the ICJ is able to link State A’s emissions to sea level rise in State B, national courts can just as easily link Company X’s emissions to harm in Community Y. The ruling lowers the bar for proving causation in corporate climate litigation.
  • Markets will react by re-rating risk; Investors, insurers, and consumers treat major legal decisions as material signals. The ICJ ruling has the potential to reframe businesses as legally relevant actors in a global chain of harm, not just indirect contributors.

The implications for the VCM are profound; credits are no longer just PR-friendly evidence of “doing something” on climate, they may soon be part of a proactive strategy to reduce legal and financial exposure.

Carbon credit procurement priorities are changing

In this scenario we anticipate that both progressive and risk-averse companies will begin to consider high-integrity carbon credits as a form of pre-legal compliance. Where deep decarbonisation is not immediately possible, companies will access the VCM to show they took measurable, science-aligned action, helping to mitigate any future claims of negligence in court or before regulators.

This shift will reshape procurement priorities:

  • Low-quality credits will be phased out from credible portfolios; avoidance projects with weak baselines or unclear permanence will be seen as legal liabilities.
  • Removals will increase; demand for biochar, direct air capture with storage (DACCS), and jurisdictional REDD+ tied to national inventories will rise.
  • Verification will tighten; third-party, litigation-resilient MRV (monitoring, reporting, verification) will become a procurement standard.

In addition to the burgeoning defensive value of funding climate action we are already seeing the sector borrow concepts from finance to mitigate risk and enhance quality and expect significant growth in innovations relating to insurance-backed credits, warrantied permanence and portfolio risk rating, creating a new class of “litigation-safe” credits, commanding premium prices.

Alongside this, the tightening of rules on environmental marketing claims, designed to avoid misleading consumers, is also likely to accelerate in the wake of the ICJ ruling and by 2028 companies making carbon neutrality claims will need to:

  • Underpin narratives relating to targets and removals with verified data showing the share of reductions vs. offsets.
  • Provide clear details about credit types and project attributes.
  • Align with robust third party methodologies like the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity Initiative (VCMI) or the Ecologi 3Rs framework.

The CSO’s VCM playbook leading into 2028 is therefore clear; to navigate this new environment, they should set the wheels in motion to:

  1. Audit their portfolios, phasing out any credits that wouldn’t withstand legal or NGO scrutiny.
  2. Lock in high-integrity supply by securing multi-year contracts for removals and jurisdictional credits before prices spike.
  3. Integrate with climate transition plans to ensure VCM use complements, rather than substitutes for, internal emissions reductions.
  4. Build legal resilience into procurement asks, and explore availability of warranties, insurance, and transparent host country position statements from suppliers.
  5. Educate the C-Suite to support alignment of legal, finance, and comms teams on the new risk landscape.

The way we think about the voluntary carbon market in 2028 will bear little resemblance to the current paradigm and the ICJ ruling is the clearest signal yet that climate responsibility is entering the realm of enforceable obligation. For companies, this means that forays into the VCM are becoming increasingly strategic and legally relevant. For CSOs, the challenge is to ensure every project supported is more than a reputational talking point and stands as a credible, defensible part of the company’s transition plan.

In this new era, voluntary action and legal risk management are converging. The winners will be those who can navigate both with equal skill.

Written by Simon Heppner, Chief Sustainability Officer at Ecologi.

Ecologi is the UK's most trusted climate action platform for every step of your climate journey. Speak with one of their climate experts today at www.ecologi.com