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Keystone 3.0
Beyond carbon, beyond doubt.
Not all nature projects are equal. Some promise the world - yet few can truly deliver it.
But if we can measure trust, longevity and actual impact with precision, we can channel funding to where it matters most.
The world's most comprehensive nature project assessment
Introducing Keystone 3.0
Earthly’s Keystone 3.0 nature project assessment brings impact on climate, biodiversity and people into one clear view and assesses nature projects with unprecedented depth and precision. The assessment is built on five years of research, project evaluation, and field insights to help identify projects that deliver durable, real-world outcomes.
Keystone 3.0 is designed to give businesses trust and comparability: working across ecosystems and registries and assessing both carbon and biodiversity projects in one system. It applies open criteria, structured weighting, and a dual-score system that measures both project maturity and confidence in the supporting evidence. This means results show what a project plans to deliver, and how credibly those claims are supported.
Unlike other assessment models, brings water into sharper focus across the assessment. We evaluate water risks and benefits that shape ecosystem health and community outcomes with an unprecedented level of detail. Social impact is also given more nuance with a methodology that reflects local context and cultures.
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Our most advanced methodology yet
How Keystone 3.0 works
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Pre-screening
AI-supported screening highlights data gaps and flags risks for review.
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Full assessment
Each indicator is scored for maturity (0–4) and confidence (1–3).
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Score calculated
Scores rolled up into pillars with equal weighting and one clear score decided.
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Turning evidence into decisions
What this means for businesses
By filtering out over 90% of projects that don’t meet our standards, Keystone 3.0 allows CSOs and sustainability decision-makers to make evidence-backed decisions and communicate their environmental progress with radical transparency. Keystone 3.0 helps organisations confidently prioritise high-quality nature investments, unlock credible finance and protect their reputation.
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160+ data points, one clear view
How Keystone 3.0 assesses nature projects for quality and longevity
Keystone 3.0 is built on a multi-layer assessment architecture designed to evaluate nature-based projects with precision, transparency and scientific integrity. It assesses quality and longevity by evaluating projects across climate, biodiversity, and people with equal weight, and by prioritising strong, verifiable evidence in how results are scored.
Each project indicator is scored in two ways: a maturity score showing how well the project meets the criterion, and a confidence score showing how strong the evidence is behind each project claim. Projects that can demonstrate impact with strong evidence achieve higher scores than those that rely on unverified claims. The two scores are combined into a clear 0–10 indicator score, and projects need an overall score of 5.5 or higher to meet Earthly’s minimum standard.
The assessment also uses external carbon-rating insights from organisations such as BeZero to cross-validate carbon integrity assessments and benchmark project performance. AI is also used only for pre-assessment screening (not scoring) to flag project gaps and inconsistencies.
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Why do businesses value Earthly's project assessment?
Highest quality
Over 90% of projects don’t meet our minimum standards. Keystone 3.0 uses over 160 quality indicators to identify the best projects in the world.
Transparent ratings
Our detailed project assessment reports and updates help companies understand their project investments and communicate their value.
Reporting-ready
Keystone aligns with emerging nature and sustainability guidance, including TNFD, ISSB and ICVCM. Back up claims with verifiable results.
Removing risk
Due-diligence means businesses can select the highest-integrity projects on the market and support nature with confidence.
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Graham Odds
Chief Strategy & Sustainability Officer
Scott Logic
"Earthly’s rigorous approach to evaluating and selecting climate action projects consistently reflects and amplifies our social mission to operate the company in a way that actively recognises the central role that business plays in society by initiating innovative ways to create opportunity in our communities and society at large, and to safeguard the future of the natural environment."
The assessment process
How Earthly’s Keystone 3.0 scores projects
Earthly evaluates projects across three fundamental pillars: carbon, biodiversity, and people. Within each pillar, specific indicators carry different weights - each playing an important role in our assessment.
Examples include additionality, baselines, permanence and leakage for the carbon pillar; ecosystem function, habitat quality and species resilience for the biodiversity pillar; and rights, livelihoods, governance and benefit sharing for the people pillar.
This keeps attention where it matters most while holding all three pillars to the same standard.
What sets Keystone 3.0 apart?
Keystone 3.0 is a framework for every kind of nature project. It is ecosystem-agnostic and registry-agnostic, and it assesses both carbon and biodiversity projects within a single system, so results are fair and comparable across methods and markets.
The scoring model is transparent, practical and built for scale and integrity. The AI pre-screening and continuous satellite monitoring help us surface risk and track permanence over time. External inputs, including internal geospatial analysis, BeZero’s Carbon Ratings and broader scientific datasets, strengthen independence and comparability. The people pillar now brings deeper social-context analysis, so that outcomes reflect real conditions on the ground.
The result is an assessment that is clear, rigorous and ready for reporting, with evidence that stands up to scrutiny and supports decision-making across corporate, investor and developer needs.
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Kate Truby
Head of Sales & Partnerships
The Future Forest Company
“We found the process to be one of the most thorough assessments we’ve been through, particularly in relation to historical land-use and the ecological context of the site. If we want high-quality projects to be recognised and trusted, then high-quality questioning has to sit behind them though, so all the questions were fair. There's a lot of scrutiny around UK nature markets right now, so having this level of due diligence in place feels important to maintaining confidence in restoration as a whole.”
Benefitting people, nature and climate around the world
Earthly's core pillars
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Carbon
Greenhouse gas management is the backbone of climate integrity. Our carbon pillar examines the credibility of a project’s baseline, whether outcomes are genuinely additional, how leakage is identified and managed, and whether monitoring systems are robust. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s Core Carbon Principles set a global benchmark for high-integrity carbon credits, reflecting the growing expectation that climate claims must be real, additional and verifiable.
Learn more)
Biodiversity
The biodiversity pillar assesses whether projects restore nature in a way that is ecologically meaningful and resilient over time. It evaluates quality and completeness, including the ecosystem’s current condition and the key drivers of degradation or species loss. The Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets a global target to conserve at least 30% of land and sea by 2030 (“30x30”), raising expectations for credible nature outcomes.
Learn more)
People
Communities determine project legitimacy and durability. The people pillar assesses whether projects deliver fair, inclusive and lasting benefits. It assesses indicators such as participation and FPIC, equity and benefit-sharing, livelihoods, education and health co-benefits. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity assessment found that over a quarter of the world’s land is traditionally owned, managed or occupied by Indigenous people - making rights, governance and participation central to long-term outcomes.
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