Markham Valley A/R Project

Audit Analysis

The Markham Valley A/R project in Papua New Guinea is a Gold Standard afforestation/forestation project with VVB-verified additionality and a 20% buffer pool, but it carries significant unresolved issues including 14 corrective actions, 3 open grievances, a pending design change (repurposing from rotational to conservation forestry), and a shift in leakage treatment from quantified to deemed negligible. The project-specific baseline, absence of a stated reassessment date, and contradictory ERR figures across documents introduce material uncertainty about the robustness of the claimed reductions.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠14 corrective actions remain open, including clarification of the basis for skipping the investment analysis in the additionality tool and a discrepancy between site-visit measurements and the project proponent's inventory data
• ⚠Leakage treatment shifted from 'quantified' in the 2020 validation report to 'deemed negligible' in the 2025 verification report with a 0% deduction, a material weakening of the leakage safeguard for an A/R project in a logging-active region
• ⚠3 unresolved grievances (maintenance, payment timing, CEPA permit update) remain open per the verification report
• ⚠Design change repurposing the project from rotational to conservation forestry is still awaiting SustainCert approval, meaning the current methodology basis is in flux
• ⚠ERR figures contradict across documents: 93,554 (monitoring report, Dec 2025) vs 112,912 (appendix, May 2024), a ~17% discrepancy unexplained in the extracted record

Credit Vintages