TIST Program in Uganda, VCS-CCB 010

Audit Analysis

The TIST Program in Uganda is a VCS-registered soil carbon project with confirmed additionality and a 10% buffer pool, but the verification report identified 24 material findings including fundamental errors in GHG calculations, baseline tree separation, and carbon fraction values. The project delivered only ~39% of its pro-rata expectation for the first monitoring period, which is conservative for claim safety but raises questions about baseline realism. The 0% leakage deduction is supported by a 'deemed negligible' justification, yet the verification report flagged that displacement conditions were not explicitly met in the project design document.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠24 material findings in the verification report, including multiple fundamental GHG calculation errors (baseline emissions added instead of subtracted, baseline trees included in project removals, carbon fraction discrepancy of 0.5 vs 0.47)
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% justified as 'deemed negligible' while the verification report explicitly noted that leakage displacement conditions were not met in the project design document
• ⚠Baseline description did not reflect forested areas in the project zone, undermining the without-project scenario
• ⚠Insufficient stakeholder representation: only 10 out of 3,900 TIST farmers were interviewed during verification

Credit Vintages