‘El Arriero ’ Afforestation on degraded grasslands under extensive grazing project

Audit Analysis

The 'El Arriero' afforestation project in Uruguay has a VVB-verified combined additionality test and a 10% buffer pool, but is undermined by a 0% leakage deduction justified only as 'deemed negligible' (despite a material finding on displaced grazing), a project-specific baseline whose 10-year reassessment is now overdue, and a contradiction in the most recent verification report stating FPIC was not conducted. Significant ERR figure discrepancies between successive monitoring reports (681,488 in 2023 vs. 257,203 in 2024) raise data-reliability concerns that temper confidence in the verified credit volume.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠FPIC recorded as not conducted in the most recent verification report (2024-04-06), contradicting an earlier report (2023-01-17) that recorded it as conducted
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% justified as 'deemed negligible' while a material finding explicitly flagged the need to clarify how displaced grazing activities were assessed
• ⚠Verified ERR dropped from 681,488 tCO2e (2023 monitoring report) to 257,203 tCO2e (2024 monitoring report), a 62% reduction, with no clear explanation in the extracted record
• ⚠Baseline reassessment overdue: project started April 2009, the 10-year VCS ALM reassessment was due by April 2019, and no reassessment date appears in any available document
• ⚠Reversal events recorded as 'reported' in the 2018 verification report but 'not addressed' in the 2026 verification report, leaving the status of any past reversals unclear

Credit Vintages