Reforestation Of Degraded Forest Reserve Areas In Ghana, West Africa

Audit Analysis

A VCS reforestation project in Ghana with a VVB-confirmed combined additionality test and a 10% buffer pool, but undermined by significant data contradictions across documents (ERR figures, buffer pool percentage, leakage treatment), a project-specific baseline, and a geographic data inconsistency in the extracted files (Colombia coordinates for a Ghana project). The project has not yet received registry approval (status: verification approval requested), and the monitoring period shows over-delivery relative to the pro-rata ex-ante expectation, which is positive for claim safety but raises questions about the accuracy of the original baseline.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Geographic data in the extracted KML file points to Bogotá, Colombia (coordinates ~-1.1 to -1.3°E, 6.8 to 7.1°N) rather than Ghana, raising a serious data-integrity question about whether the correct project files were extracted or whether the project documentation contains a geographic error.
• ⚠The PDD (Jan 2022) reports a lifetime ERR of 1,796,683 tCO₂e while the monitoring report (Apr 2024) reports 481,955 tCO₂e — a factor-of-3.7 discrepancy that cannot be reconciled without further clarification.
• ⚠Buffer pool percentage differs between the PDD (19%) and the monitoring report (10%), and the leakage treatment shifted from 'deemed negligible' (0% deduction, 2021 verification) to 'quantified' (10% deduction, 2024 monitoring), indicating the project's environmental claims have been materially revised after the fact.
• ⚠Registry status is 'Verification approval requested' — the project has not yet been approved, so no credits have been issued under the current verification cycle.

Credit Vintages