Anew - Big Poplar Forestry Project

Audit Analysis

The Big Poplar Forestry Project is a well-structured ACR improved-forest-management project with VVB-verified additionality, a quantified 30% leakage deduction, and an 18.45% buffer pool. The main concerns are the project-specific modeled baseline (rather than a jurisdictional or measured baseline), the absence of documented FPIC and grievance mechanisms, and a 33% discrepancy in the ex-ante lifetime ERR between the PDD and an appendix. The project delivered approximately 123% of its pro-rata expectation for the elapsed monitoring period, indicating a conservative ex-ante estimate.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Ex-ante lifetime ERR differs by 33% between the PDD (6,061,945 tCO₂e) and an appendix (4,562,904 tCO₂e), creating uncertainty about the true baseline removals estimate.
• ⚠Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) was not conducted and no grievance mechanism is documented, despite safeguards being mentioned in the project documents.
• ⚠The baseline is project-specific and modeled rather than jurisdictional or field-measured, increasing sensitivity to assumptions in the FVS growth model and site-index coefficients.

Credit Vintages