GS10789 GS10790 RVPA-52 Efficient and Clean cooking for Households in Somalia

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard cookstove project in Somalia has a VVB-verified combined additionality test and a quantified 5% leakage deduction, but is undermined by an extreme discrepancy between the ex-ante ERR estimate (42,569 tCO₂e) and the verified figure (269,440 tCO₂e), a significant fNRB revision from 84.1% to 64%, the absence of a buffer pool, and an unusually large volume of unresolved material findings and corrective actions across multiple verification cycles. The project operates in a conflict-affected setting, which compounds monitoring and data-reliability risks.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠The ex-ante ERR estimate of 42,569 tCO₂e (validation report) is roughly 6.3× lower than the verified figure of 269,440 tCO₂e (verification report), raising serious over-crediting or data-integrity concerns; the two documents appear to have swapped or mislabelled the claimed and verified values.
• ⚠The fNRB was revised from 84.1% to 64% (sourced from CDM Tool 33 v3.0) between the March 2025 and November 2025 verification reports, a 24-percentage-point change that materially alters the baseline and credit volume.
• ⚠Over 40 material findings, clarifications, and corrective actions are listed across the verification and validation reports, including an unresolved FAR on the grievance mechanism failing to capture all stove defects reported by enumerators.
• ⚠The crediting period is inconsistent between the monitoring report (2022-09-26 to 2027-09-25) and the validation report (2024-10-02 to 2029-10-01), creating ambiguity about the actual project duration and credit validity window.

Credit Vintages