18 Reserves Forest Carbon Project

Audit Analysis

The 18 Reserves Forest Carbon Project is a well-structured ACR forest carbon project with a verified combined additionality test, a 20% buffer pool, and a highly conservative 40% leakage deduction. However, the verification report identified 33 material findings and 18 corrective actions—many administrative but several substantive (calculation errors, missing ESIA sections, outdated template)—which significantly erode confidence in the reporting quality. The project over-delivers relative to its ex-ante estimate, which is a positive for claim safety, but the project-specific baseline and gaps in safeguards documentation (FPIC not conducted, ESIA incomplete) limit overall integrity.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠33 material findings in the 2025 verification report, including incorrect Net ERR calculation (buffer deduction not applied), Equation 5 miscalculation, and mislabeled with-project uncertainty
• ⚠FPIC not conducted and ESIA Report initially missing with Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Gender Equality sections marked out of scope
• ⚠Monitoring Report used outdated ACR template version 3 instead of version 4, and was dated before the end of the reporting period
• ⚠Crediting period dates were inconsistent between the GHG Plan and the Monitoring Report

Credit Vintages