Rwanda Riparian Restoration Project

Audit Analysis

The Rwanda Riparian Restoration Project is a VCS ALM soil-carbon project with a verified additionality assessment, a 10% buffer pool, and no reported reversal events. However, the project-specific baseline, contradictory leakage justifications across documents, and a substantial list of 19 corrective actions at validation indicate moderate documentation and methodological concerns. The first monitoring period shows the project delivering well below its pro-rata ex-ante expectation, which is conservative but raises questions about the accuracy of the original carbon estimates.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠The PDD claims a lifetime ex-ante estimate of 2,645,000 tCO2e while the validation report records 1,039,272 tCO2e — a 2.5× discrepancy that suggests the project's original carbon claim may have been inflated relative to the VVB-verified figure.
• ⚠19 corrective actions were required at validation, including missing common-practice analysis, incomplete carbon equations, and SOC calculation errors, indicating the PDD had significant technical gaps before VVB sign-off.
• ⚠Leakage justification is contradictory: the validation report (2023) states leakage was 'deemed negligible' while the monitoring report (2025) states it was 'quantified,' yet both apply a 0% deduction.

Credit Vintages

No issuances recorded on the registry.