From Principles to Practice
CORE — Carbon180’s framework for responsible carbon removal — centers communities, ecosystems, and real climate outcomes.
The CORE framework defines what it means to do carbon removal well: centering communities, ecosystems, and real climate outcomes. But principles alone don’t drive real-world decisions. How they get put into practice does.
So what does it look like to put CORE into practice?
This is where carbon removal becomes real: in decisions about where carbon removal is implemented, how it’s governed, how impacts are measured, and who is accountable over time. This post focuses on that transition from principles to implementation, and how CORE can help guide the systems and decisions that will ultimately define the field.
From Principles to Implementation
The CORE framework defines a set of principles and practices to guide how carbon removal is designed, deployed, and governed. It outlines expectations that responsible interventions should meet – from transparency and community agency to full-system carbon accounting and long-term monitoring.
But carbon removal interventions are shaped by real-world decisions about site selection, project and program design, funding structures, monitoring systems, and long-term governance. Different actors – implementers, regulators, funders, purchasers, and communities – play different roles in shaping those outcomes.
To support implementation, CORE is accompanied by a Resource Hub and a set of hypothetical scenarios.
The Resource Hub provides implementation tools and examples – from environmental assessment approaches and governance mechanisms to monitoring systems and financial assurance structures. The hypotheticals illustrate how these resources can be applied across the lifecycle of a carbon removal intervention, spanning land, technology, and ocean-based approaches.
Together, these resources translate CORE into guidance that helps actors navigate how those expectations can be implemented in practice. They make implementation more tangible, but implementation cannot stop with guidance documents or repositories alone.
The Gap Between Frameworks and Reality
Implementation is where principles encounter real decisions – about project and program design, financing, governance, and monitoring. It’s where incentives are set, systems to hold people responsible are put in place, and claims are tested against reality.
As carbon removal moves from pilots to efforts at scale, that distinction becomes increasingly important. The systems we build now will shape how the field develops for decades.
The CORE framework was developed with that transition in mind: not just defining responsible carbon removal, but helping move the field toward implementation.
Implementation Happens Through Institutions
Carbon removal approaches are shaped by the rules embedded in real systems – permitting processes, financing structures, procurement contracts, monitoring requirements, and governance arrangements. These systems determine what gets built, how interventions operate, and who is accountable when things go wrong.
This is where principles move from aspiration to infrastructure.
Transparency becomes real when monitoring data must be publicly disclosed. Community agency becomes real when communities hold formal roles in governance or negotiated benefit agreements. Long-term accountability becomes real when financial assurance mechanisms and liability provisions are written into project financing.
Different actors play different roles in this process. Implementers design projects, programs, and operational systems. Regulators establish oversight and enforcement pathways. Funders influence risk allocation and accountability mechanisms. Communities bring local knowledge and define what responsible deployment means in specific places.
When CORE principles begin to influence these institutional systems, they shape the incentives and decisions that determine how carbon removal is actually implemented.
How CORE Influences Implementation
CORE is designed to influence how carbon removal interventions are designed, governed, and evaluated.The same core questions apply whether you’re talking about direct air capture, land-based approaches, ocean-based systems, specific projects, or jurisdictional programs. Many of the core implementation questions are similar: Who participates in decisions? How are impacts evaluated? What information is shared publicly? And who is responsible if things go wrong?
CORE does not prescribe a single model for answering these questions. Instead, it provides a framework that institutions can use when structuring interventions and the systems that govern them.
Applying CORE may begin with integrating these principles at key decision points – during site selection, governance design, funding conditions, or monitoring requirements.
In practice, this shows up in several places.
Community participation and local governance
Carbon removal interventions occur in specific places and affect communities over long time horizons. CORE emphasizes meaningful participation from early stages, including advisory bodies, negotiated benefit agreements, and roles in monitoring and dispute resolution.
Early-stage intervention design
Many of the most consequential decisions happen early in the lifecycle of an intervention – during site evaluation, governance planning, and environmental assessment. CORE clarifies expectations around transparency, community participation, environmental stewardship, and full-system accountability before those decisions are locked in.
Funding, procurement, and oversight
Institutions that fund, purchase, or regulate carbon removal interventions also shape how they are implemented. Funding conditions, procurement standards, monitoring requirements, and regulatory oversight all influence which interventions move forward and how accountability is maintained over time.
Across these contexts, CORE provides a shared reference point that institutions can use when evaluating whether carbon removal interventions are being implemented in ways that protect communities, ecosystems, and the climate.
Implementation is Iterative
Carbon removal technologies and the institutions governing them are still evolving. As interventions move from pilots to long-lived infrastructure, new lessons will emerge about environmental impacts, monitoring systems, governance, and long-term stewardship.
CORE is designed to evolve alongside these lessons. The Resource Hub and hypotheticals will be updated over time as real-world experience informs how responsible carbon removal can be implemented in practice.
In this way, implementation doesn’t just follow the framework – it helps refine it. We welcome feedback from practitioners, communities, and policymakers working to implement these ideas.
Photo by Alejandro JV