Chyulu Hills REDD+ Project

Audit Analysis

The Chyulu Hills REDD+ project has a verified additionality assessment and a 10% buffer pool with no reported reversals, but is undermined by a project-specific baseline with calculation errors, a 0% leakage deduction for a soil-carbon project, and an extensive list of material findings and corrective actions spanning multiple reporting cycles. The project delivered approximately 86% of its pro-rata ex-ante expectation for the 2017–2020 monitoring period, indicating conservative crediting, yet the depth of documentation deficiencies and unresolved soil-sampling gaps raise meaningful concerns about the robustness of the underlying MRV.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Baseline emissions calculation used an incorrect equation (F3 instead of F.5) and was missing an exponential function in the denominator; both errors were identified and corrected during verification, indicating the original PDD baseline was unreliable.
• ⚠Soil organic carbon was included in the current-period accounting without direct sampling, and proxy area plots were not re-measured due to access constraints; a deviation was approved but the data gap remains.
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% with only a generic 'quantified' justification, which is weak for a soil-carbon REDD+ project where displacement of soil management practices is plausible.
• ⚠An ongoing Mikulolo land-tenure dispute (court case) was identified during verification, and the non-permanence risk score for land tenure was corrected upward to 5, signalling unresolved tenure risk.
• ⚠Dozens of material findings and corrective actions span the validation, verification, and monitoring reports, including missing report sections, template version errors, and inaccessible referenced documents.

Credit Vintages