Florestal Santa Maria Project

Audit Analysis

The Florestal Santa Maria Project is a registered VCS forestry project in Brazil with a verified additionality test and a 10% buffer pool, but it carries significant integrity concerns including deforestation within the project area (58 ha), extensive leakage-belt losses (over 1,100 ha), absence of FPIC, and 22 nonconformances raised during verification. The project delivered approximately 68% of its pro-rata lifetime expectation for the 2019–2022 monitoring period, indicating conservative crediting, yet the low extraction confidence and numerous unresolved documentation gaps limit confidence in the overall data quality.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Deforestation of approximately 58 hectares occurred within the project area in 2018 due to a neighbor's activity overlapping the boundary, raising non-permanence and over-crediting concerns
• ⚠Leakage belt deforestation of 984 hectares (2018) and 126 hectares (2019) indicates substantial displacement risk that may not be fully captured in the quantified leakage deduction
• ⚠Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) was not conducted, as confirmed by the 2021 verification report, despite a 2012 validation report claiming it was done
• ⚠Buffer pool was reduced to the 10% VCS minimum from 13.5% in the PDD, leaving minimal protection against reversal risk
• ⚠22 nonconformances were identified in the draft verification report, including fundamental errors in leakage calculations, baseline emissions, and non-permanence risk rating

Credit Vintages