GS1247 VPA 68 Zoba Debub Community Boreholes

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard water-borehole project in Eritrea displaces household fuel use and has VVB-confirmed additionality via a combined test, with no reversal events reported in the most recent monitoring. However, the 0% leakage deduction (reduced from 5% in the PDD), the absence of a buffer pool, a project-specific baseline, and a direct contradiction on whether FPIC was conducted materially weaken the integrity and claim-safety profile. Fourteen cross-document contradictions—many resolvable as unit or period differences but several substantive—combined with low extraction confidence and numerous open corrective actions, limit overall confidence in the data.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠FPIC status is directly contradicted: the 2018 verification report states FPIC was conducted, while the 2020 monitoring report states it was not—a fundamental safeguards gap that cannot be resolved by recency alone.
• ⚠Leakage deduction was reduced from 5% in the PDD (2023) to 0% in the 2024 verification report with only a 'quantified' justification; for a fuel-displacement project where households can revert to firewood, a zero deduction is aggressive.
• ⚠CAR#5 (2024 verification report) flags that some households do not meet the 1 km walking-distance requirement of the TPDDTEC methodology, yet no explanation of how this was handled in monitoring was provided.
• ⚠Low extraction confidence across 33 documents means at least one key document was poorly readable, reducing reliability of the extracted figures.

Credit Vintages