Quality Assessment of REDD+ Carbon Credit Projects

The report finds that REDD+ projects under Verra's methodologies systematically over-credit their climate benefits due to inflated baselines, underestimated leakage, and exaggerated forest carbon stocks. It further argues that social safeguards are often treated as a 'check-box activity,' failing to protect vulnerable forest communities from displacement and rights violations. The authors conclude that REDD+ is ill-suited for generating carbon offsets and recommend a shift toward a contributions-based approach and rights-based safeguards.

• REDD+ methodologies generate credits that represent only a small fraction of their claimed climate benefit, with emissions reductions exaggerated across all reviewed quantification factors.
• Project baselines are frequently inflated; one study of 16 VCS-REDD+ projects across five countries found that issued credits were more than 12 times the independent assessment of actual impacts.
• There is extreme variability in baseline estimates depending on the methodology used; for four sample projects, the average difference between the lowest and highest baseline values was 1459%.
• Market leakage is significantly underestimated in practice, with 59% of Verra's REDD+ projects taking no leakage deduction despite literature suggesting rates between 10% and 70%.
• Forest carbon accounting is prone to over-estimation; in a sample of 11 projects, developers chose allometric equations that resulted in credit generation 23% to 30% higher than independent estimates.
• Natural reversal risks are severely underreported; while projects averaged a 2% risk rating, remote-sensing data for 57 projects showed a mean 100-year risk of stand-clearing disturbance of 28%.
• Social safeguards are frequently treated as a 'check-box activity' and fail to protect vulnerable populations, with some projects resulting in displacement or dispossession.
• Community engagement risk is systematically underreported, with 94% of 18 reviewed projects rating this risk as zero despite inadequate consultation practices.
• Third-party auditors (VVBs) often fail to enforce standards due to conflicts of interest, as they are hired directly by the project developers they are tasked with auditing.
• The report concludes that REDD+ is fundamentally ill-suited for carbon offsets because it transfers carbon from permanent fossil storage to a short-duration cycle and relies on an incentive structure that rewards over-crediting.

APA

Haya, B. K., Alford-Jones, K., Anderegg, W. R. L., Beymer-Farris, B., Blanchard, L., Bomfim, B., Chin, D., Evans, S., Hogan, M., Holm, J. A., McAfee, K., So, I., West, T. A. P., & Withey, L. (2023). Quality Assessment of REDD+ Carbon Credit Projects. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Quality-Assessment-of-REDD-Carbon-Crediting-1.pdf

Chicago

Haya, Barbara K., Kelsey Alford-Jones, William R. L. Anderegg, Betsy Beymer-Farris, Libby Blanchard, Barbara Bomfim, Dylan Chin, et al. Quality Assessment of REDD+ Carbon Credit Projects. Carbon Market Watch, 2023. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Quality-Assessment-of-REDD-Carbon-Crediting-1.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Haya |first1=Barbara K. |last2=Alford-Jones |first2=Kelsey |last3=Anderegg |first3=William R. L. |last4=Beymer-Farris |first4=Betsy |last5=Blanchard |first5=Libby |last6=Bomfim |first6=Barbara |last7=Chin |first7=Dylan |last8=Evans |first8=Samuel |last9=Hogan |first9=Marie |display-authors=etal |title=Quality Assessment of REDD+ Carbon Credit Projects |publisher=Carbon Market Watch |date=15 September 2023 |url=https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Quality-Assessment-of-REDD-Carbon-Crediting-1.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{haya2023quality, author = {Haya, Barbara K. and Alford-Jones, Kelsey and Anderegg, William R. L. and Beymer-Farris, Betsy and Blanchard, Libby and Bomfim, Barbara and Chin, Dylan and Evans, Samuel and Hogan, Marie and Holm, Jennifer A. and McAfee, Kathleen and So, Ivy and West, Thales A. P. and Withey, Lauren}, title = {{Quality Assessment of REDD+ Carbon Credit Projects}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2023}, month = sep, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Quality-Assessment-of-REDD-Carbon-Crediting-1.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }