GS5047 VPA23 African Improved Cookstoves and Clean Water Programme: Nyagatare Safe Water Project III

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard safe-water (borehole) project in Rwanda with VVB-confirmed additionality and a conservative national-default FNRB, but undermined by multiple cross-document contradictions (ERR figures, leakage justification, safeguards), a 0% leakage deduction with inconsistent rationale, no stated buffer pool, and low extraction confidence that casts doubt on the reliability of the underlying data. The project name mismatch between the header (VPA23 / Project III) and the extracted verification report (VPA21 / Project I) further weakens confidence that the documents reviewed actually pertain to this specific project.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠ERR contradiction: the verification report (2022) records 47,308 tCO₂e while a separate monitoring report (2022) records 62,570 tCO₂e — a 32% discrepancy that is unexplained in the available documents.
• ⚠Leakage justification is contradictory: the 2018 PDD states leakage was 'deemed negligible' while the 2023 monitoring report states it was 'quantified', yet the deduction applied is 0% in both cases.
• ⚠Project name mismatch: the header identifies VPA23 / Nyagatare Safe Water Project III, but the verification report's project_name field reads VPA21 / Nyagatare Safe Water Project I (GS 6189), raising the possibility that documents from a different project in the same PoA were used.
• ⚠Three corrective actions were required by the VVB, including capping the usage rate at 90% and correcting inconsistent baseline values for SDG6 and SDG13, indicating the submitted data did not fully comply with the approved design.

Credit Vintages