GS1247 VPA 187 Lango Safe Water Project

Audit Analysis

The Lango Safe Water Project is a Gold Standard borehole-based safe water project in Uganda with VVB-verified additionality and documented safeguards, but it is undermined by a severe fNRB value discrepancy (0.0004 vs 0.81 across verification reports), a 0% leakage deduction with no justification, significant operational degradation (72% borehole operationality, multiple water-quality failures), and an extensive backlog of open corrective and follow-up actions. The project's credit claims rest on a project-specific baseline and an assumed usage rate (99.5%) that substantially exceeds the verified rate (87.5%), creating meaningful over-crediting risk.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠fNRB value differs by a factor of ~2,000 between the 2024 verification report (0.81) and the 2025 verification report (0.0004); the 2025 value is implausibly low for a firewood/charcoal-displacement baseline and raises serious data-reliability concerns
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% and the most recent verification report (Feb 2025) records the justification as 'not addressed', despite the PDD originally proposing a 5% deduction
• ⚠Borehole operationality has degraded to 72% (16,883 breakdown days) and 5–6 boreholes were removed from crediting due to water-quality failures, yet the full claimed ERR of 51,658 tCO₂e was verified without apparent proportional adjustment
• ⚠Assumed usage rate of 99.5% versus a verified rate of 87.5% (from the Dec 2025 monitoring report) represents a 12-percentage-point gap that inflates credit claims
• ⚠No buffer pool is in place to cover the risk of borehole failure or user reversion to baseline water sources

Credit Vintages