What MCC is, in three paragraphs
Marine Conservation Credits (MCC) is an AI-native, contribution-first crediting programme for ocean and coastal ecosystems. Where legacy carbon registries optimise for offsetting tonnage, MCC is built around marine conservation outcomes — biodiversity recovery, habitat integrity, community stewardship — with carbon as one signal among many. The programme is contribution-first by design and is not positioned as a compliance offset instrument.
Activity is grouped under five methodology families, as the MCC-100 Annex — Definitions Register v1.0 §2 has them: F01 Blue Carbon, F02 Restoration (coral, kelp, oyster), F03 Fisheries, F04 Pollution Prevention (including ghost gear), and F05 MPA Management. That is the taxonomy in force and it prevails on conflict; the corpus carries four others, and this page previously gave F03 as “marine ecosystem conservation”, which is a fifth. F02 and F05 are closed to new applications because the taxonomy in force assigns them an instrument code the Programme abolished. The boundaries are under review and are before the Governing Board. The methodology library, validation flow, monitoring stack and registry all derive from this taxonomy. You will see family codes (F01-F05) on every project card and methodology page; understanding the family makes the rest of the platform legible.
We are running a structured academic review of MCC methodology documents. Your job is not to bless the platform — it is to stress-test it. Walk through the register and the consultation texts as if you were a methodology committee member or a buyer doing due diligence. Where the audit trail is thin, where the additionality argument wobbles, where the safeguards are aspirational rather than evidenced — please tell us. Use the feedback form below; every entry is timestamped, attributed to your name and (optionally) your institution, and carries a severity tag we use to triage.
Start here: what is open for review
The methodology texts your team was invited to peer-review, the lead pilot they will apply to, and the wider consultation programme. Comments on the methodology texts can go through the public consultation, by mail, or through the feedback form below.
?reviewer=1 to any project URL to enable the reviewer banner.What to evaluate
Six lenses. You don't need to apply all six to every project — but try to cover each lens at least once across the projects you review.
PDD completeness
Is the Project Design Document scoped clearly? Does the methodology fit the proposed activity? Are project boundaries (geographic, temporal, ecological) well defined?
Additionality argument
Is the case for additionality credible? Is there a defensible counterfactual baseline? Do regulatory / financial / common-practice tests pass?
FPIC and safeguards
Is Free, Prior and Informed Consent documented for affected communities? Are environmental and social safeguards screened? Are grievance channels visible?
Monitoring frequency and methods
Are monitoring intervals fit for the ecosystem (mangrove vs reef vs kelp)? Are methods (remote sensing, in-situ, eDNA) appropriate and reproducible?
SD contributions
Are the Sustainable Development Goal mappings credible and evidence-backed — or aspirational claims? Are co-benefits to communities and biodiversity quantified?
Validation / verification audit trail
Is the chain VVB to validation to registration to issuance to retirement traceable end-to-end? Are decisions, reviewers, and timestamps captured?
Submit feedback
Use the form below for anything that doesn't fit a comment thread on a specific consultation. Tag a project (or "General"), pick a severity, and write as much as you need — up to 5,000 characters.
Recent feedback
Last five entries (anonymised — first name and institution only). Visible to reassure reviewers that submissions are being received; full content is reviewed by the team in the admin console.