GS1247 VPA 194 Zambia Eastern Province Safe Water Project

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard safe-water VPA under the Improved Kitchen Regimes PoA has VVB-confirmed additionality and a recently reassessed baseline, but is undermined by ten cross-document contradictions—including a ten-fold discrepancy in claimed emission reductions (14,266 vs 150,000), conflicting leakage treatments (0% vs 5%), and inconsistent additionality test descriptions. The project's 0% leakage deduction with a 'deemed negligible' justification is weak for a borehole-based water project where users could revert to firewood, and the large volume of open corrective actions and findings signals ongoing documentation and monitoring gaps.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Claimed ERR of 14,266 (monitoring report, Oct 2023) conflicts with 150,000 in the verification report (Sep 2023)—a factor of ~10.5× discrepancy that cannot be reconciled without clarification of scope or units
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% in the verification report but 5% in the PDD; the justification shifts between 'deemed negligible' and 'quantified' across documents, leaving the true treatment unclear
• ⚠27 boreholes failed water-quality tests in Q1 2022 and a further 7 in a subsequent quarter, indicating recurring operational quality issues that affect the reliability of the credited reductions
• ⚠Five FARs remain open (SDG indicators at VPA level, fNRB report, monitoring justification), meaning key verification requirements are unmet
• ⚠Crediting-period start dates differ between the verification report (2019-05-15) and the monitoring report (2019-08-15), creating ambiguity about the exact crediting window

Credit Vintages