Lake County Forest Preserve District Carbon Planting Project

Audit Analysis

The Lake County Forest Preserve District urban forestry project has a verified additionality assessment, a 5% buffer pool, and no reported reversals, but suffers from an unquantified leakage treatment, absent FPIC and grievance mechanisms, and a project-specific (rather than jurisdictional) baseline. The verified emissions reduction of 1,337 tCO₂e for the ~4-year monitoring period represents roughly 222% of the pro-rata expectation against the 3,904 tCO₂e lifetime estimate, indicating no over-crediting risk. Low extraction confidence and several material findings (area and tree-count reductions) temper confidence in the overall record.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Leakage deduction is not quantified and no justification is provided in any available document, despite tree-planting projects carrying inherent displacement risk
• ⚠No Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) was conducted and no grievance mechanism is documented, despite safeguards being mentioned in the verification report
• ⚠Project area was reduced from 445 acres to 62 acres and tree count from 2,960 to 2,121 during verification due to mapping changes — a 86% area reduction that, while corrected, signals initial over-estimation
• ⚠Minimum extraction confidence across the document set is rated low, reducing reliability of the structured data

Credit Vintages