Tarout Bay Sustainable Wetlands and Mangrove Conservation (Ta-SWAM)

Audit Analysis

The Tarout Bay mangrove conservation project has VVB-confirmed additionality and a 10% buffer pool, but is undermined by a critical buffer-pool contradiction (10% vs 0.1%), a project-specific baseline with no stated reassessment date, a 0% leakage deduction deemed negligible without robust justification, and 31 material findings (8 CARs) at validation. The ERR figures show a 15% discrepancy between the PDD and appendix lifetime estimates, and the absence of a stated monitoring period, FNRB method, and usage monitoring data limits transparency.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Buffer pool percentage contradicted between the validation report (10%) and the appendix (0.1%) — a 100× discrepancy that, if the lower figure is correct, effectively eliminates the permanence safeguard
• ⚠CAR 07 at validation identified that the project area included a conservation area not eligible for A/R credits, indicating boundary/eligibility issues in the initial submission
• ⚠0% leakage deduction deemed negligible for a blue-carbon mangrove/wetland project without a quantified or methodologically grounded justification
• ⚠Reversal events field recorded as 'not addressed' in the extracted data, contradicting the detail field which states a non-permanence risk analysis was performed (rating 10)
• ⚠Ex-ante lifetime ERR contradicted: PDD states 32,095 tCO₂e while the appendix shows 27,089 tCO₂e (~15% gap)

Credit Vintages