Carbon Sequestration, Compensation and Environmental Accounting

These lecture notes provide a conceptual and operational overview of carbon sequestration, carbon compensation (offsetting) and environmental accounting. The document introduces key principles and practical issues relevant to climate policy and carbon markets, with emphasis on monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), additionality, permanence, leakage and credit integrity. It also outlines how carbon-related information can be framed within environmental-economic accounting approaches (e.g., SEEA) to support decision-making and reporting.

Context: Prepared as a training handout supporting the author’s talk (“Introduction to climate change, carbon sequestration and carbon compensation”) delivered at the workshop Il sequestro e la compensazione del carbonio – Strategie, tecnologie e applicazioni pratiche (Mazara del Vallo, Italy; 16 January 2026; blended format).

Suggested citation: Maccarrone, V. (2026). Carbon Sequestration, Compensation and Environmental Accounting (Lecture notes / training handout, v1.0). CNR-IRBIM. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18755889