VPA 211 Sierra Leone Safe Water

Audit Analysis

A Gold Standard clean drinking water project in Sierra Leone with VVB-confirmed additionality, no reversal events, and confirmed safeguards (FPIC, grievance mechanism, benefit sharing). However, the extracted record is significantly contaminated with material findings and corrective actions referencing cook stoves, kitchen performance tests, and CH4/N2O emission factors that are unrelated to a water project, raising serious data-reliability concerns. Leakage is deducted at 0% with no stated justification, no buffer pool is documented, and the usage-rate cap (95%) creates a discrepancy with the reported verified rate (98.69%).

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Material findings and corrective actions contain extensive references to cook stoves, kitchen performance tests, CH4/N2O emission factors, and stove efficiency — none of which are relevant to a clean drinking water project — indicating cross-project data contamination in the extracted record
• ⚠Leakage deduction of 0% with justification recorded as 'not addressed' in the 2024 verification report, despite a 2023 verification report having recorded it as 'quantified'
• ⚠Usage rate reported as 98.69% in the verification report but capped at 95% per corrective action CAR-6, creating an inconsistency in the verified figure used for credit calculation
• ⚠FNRB value of 0.95 (national default) appears inapplicable to a clean drinking water project, suggesting template or data-extraction error

Credit Vintages