Planting Biodiverse Forests in Panama

Audit Analysis

This Gold Standard A/R project in Panama has a verified additionality test and a 20% buffer pool, but is undermined by a volume of material findings (11 items), an unaddressed reversal risk, and a leakage deduction that was reduced from 10% to 0% between the PDD and the verification report. The project is CORSIA-eligible, creating a dual-channel risk, and the project-specific baseline adds conservatism concerns. Overall, the project is functional but carries moderate-to-elevated quality risk.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Reversal events are explicitly 'not addressed' in the verification report — a critical gap for a removal (A/R) project where biomass loss or land-use change could reverse sequestered carbon
• ⚠Leakage deduction was reduced from 10% (PDD, 2023) to 0% (verification report, 2025) while the justification shifted from 'deemed negligible' to 'quantified' — an internally inconsistent and unexplained change
• ⚠Eleven material findings were logged, including exclusion of MU 17 from issuance, area-size corrections due to an Excel row-shift error, sampling-plot misassignment, and a deviation in monitoring approach (census vs. sampling plots)
• ⚠CORSIA eligibility is confirmed while CCP status is not stated, leaving the dual-channel / double-claiming risk unresolved

Credit Vintages