Planting for the Future: Financially sustainable agroforestry systems and payments for ecosystem services

Audit Analysis

A registered VCS agroforestry project in Peru with a verified combined additionality test and a 14% buffer pool, but critically lacking any monitoring data to verify actual carbon delivery. Significant contradictions exist between two versions of the validation report regarding the lifetime ERR (9,147 vs 21,595 tCO2e) and the crediting period (5 vs 30 years), and the 0% leakage deduction rests on a weak 'deemed negligible' justification for a project type where displacement risk is plausible.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Two versions of the validation report (2015-02-18 and 2015-03-23) report materially different lifetime ERR figures (21,595 vs 9,147 tCO2e) and crediting periods (30 years vs 5 years), creating uncertainty about the true ex-ante claim
• ⚠No monitoring reports or verified ERR data are available in the extracted record, making it impossible to confirm whether the project delivered any credits or to assess over/under-delivery
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% justified only as 'deemed negligible' without quantified analysis, which is a weak basis for an agroforestry project in a developing-country context where land-use displacement is a recognised risk
• ⚠16 nonconformances were raised at validation, including two directly questioning the application of the additionality decision tree (NCR 10 and NCR 13), indicating the additionality case required substantial correction before approval

Credit Vintages

No issuances recorded on the registry.