Reporting, verification, and accounting frameworks for carbon dioxide removal: Scientific integrity, permanence, and governance challenges across emerging pathways

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is becoming an important component of long-term climate mitigation. However, its climate value depends on whether removal claims reflect measurable, durable changes in atmospheric CO₂ rather than gross carbon capture or storage alone. This review evaluates monitoring, reporting, verification, and accounting (MRV/A) across biological, biochar-based, geochemical, oceanic, and engineered CDR pathways using evidence published between 2015 and 2026. The synthesis is organized around four linked functions: measuring the physical intervention, validating the net atmospheric effect, recording the resulting carbon-accounting unit, and using it in markets, corporate claims, or national inventories. The evidence shows that credible accounting requires explicit treatment of counterfactual baselines, additionality, lifecycle emissions, leakage, timing, uncertainty, storage duration, and reversal risk. Remote sensing, field sensors, geochemical measurements, lifecycle assessment, computational models, and artificial intelligence (AI) can strengthen individual stages of MRV/A, but their roles and validation requirements differ. Registries improve traceability but cannot compensate for weak measurement or accounting rules. Current policy and market frameworks also remain heterogeneous in how they treat durability, liability, uncertainty, and ownership. Future MRV/A systems should therefore link pathway-specific measurements with transparent validation rules, time-dependent accounting, interoperable records, environmental performance, social legitimacy, and clearly assigned long-term responsibility.