Anew - Allagash Headwaters Forestry Project

Audit Analysis

The Allagash Headwaters IFM project has the correct structural safeguards in place — VVB-verified additionality, an 18% buffer pool, a conservative 40% leakage deduction, and no reported reversals — but the verification report surfaces 24 material findings including boundary overlap with an adjacent project, multiple baseline calculation errors, and a within-document contradiction in the verified ERR figure. These data-quality issues significantly undermine confidence in the reported credit quantity despite the project's sound design.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠24 material findings in the verification report (2025-01-27), including boundary shapefiles overlapping with an adjacent project (CAR 1), strata area mismatches, and multiple baseline calculation errors (CR 1–CR 14)
• ⚠Within-document contradiction: the same verification report (2025-01-27) contains two different verified ERR values — 112,206 and 92,008 tCO₂e — with no explanation of which is final
• ⚠FPIC was not conducted and no grievance mechanism is documented, despite safeguards being mentioned in the project documents
• ⚠Baseline is project-specific and modeled, with no record of reassessment; the verification report flags a negative NPV in the financial barriers test and an NPV mismatch between workbooks (CR 5, CR 10)

Credit Vintages