Painted Forest Carbon Project

Audit Analysis

The Painted Forest Carbon Project is a VCS ALM soil-carbon project in Canada with a VVB-verified investment additionality test, a 12% buffer pool, and a quantified 15.3% leakage deduction. However, significant data contradictions across documents—particularly in reversal events, grievance mechanism status, and lifetime ERR figures—undermine confidence in the project's data integrity. Safeguards documentation is weak, with FPIC not conducted and the grievance mechanism absent per the validation report.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Contradiction on reversal events: the 2025 PDD reports none, but a 2024 appendix indicates reversal events were reported—this discrepancy is unresolved and raises permanence concerns
• ⚠Grievance mechanism status is contradictory: the validation report (Aug 2025) states it is absent, while the PDD (Jul 2025) states it is present; the VVB's assessment is privileged, leaving a safeguards gap
• ⚠Lifetime ERR figure in the 2022 PDD (10,664,945 tCO₂e) is ~43× the 2025 PDD claimed figure (249,000 tCO₂e), creating ambiguity about the true ex-ante estimate and the basis of the verified figure
• ⚠FPIC was not conducted, and the validation report confirms no grievance mechanism is in place, representing a meaningful safeguards deficiency for a community-adjacent land-use project

Credit Vintages

No issuances recorded on the registry.