TIST Program in Kenya, VCS 003

Audit Analysis

The TIST Kenya agroforestry project has a VVB-confirmed additionality assessment and no reported reversal events, but suffers from a project-specific baseline, a thin 0% leakage justification, and significant operational attrition (239 project areas removed, 454 pending). The most recent monitoring period delivered only about 48% of the pro-rata ex-ante expectation, and multiple data-quality errors in the verification and monitoring reports undermine confidence in the reported figures.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠The 2020 monitoring period verified only 33,231 tCO2e against a pro-rata expectation of roughly 69,500 tCO2e (434,464 lifetime ex-ante × 4.8/30 years), i.e. about 48% of the expected delivery for the elapsed period.
• ⚠239 project areas were removed from the project description and 454 remain in a 'Pending' category since the last monitoring period, indicating substantial operational attrition.
• ⚠Buffer pool was reduced from 20% (2011 verification) to 10% (2020 verification) without a clearly documented risk re-assessment in the extracted record.
• ⚠Leakage deduction is 0% with only a 'deemed negligible' justification, which is thin for an agroforestry project where displaced grazing or cropland is a plausible leakage pathway.
• ⚠Multiple arithmetic and reporting errors were identified in the monitoring report (buffer calculation, incorrect net GHG value of 0 instead of 21,705, missing Non-Permanence Risk appendix).

Credit Vintages Exhausted