Webinar – Project-based Avoided Planned and Unplanned Deforestation

In this webinar the Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) released its scores on project-based avoided deforestation projects. The new assessments cover the five most relevant quantification methodologies for these project types, including VM0006, VM0007, VM0009, VM0015 and VM0048 – all available under the Verified Carbon Standard VCS.

The ACHIEVE Project contributed to this webinar by conducting the assessment of VM0048, which is the new landmark methodology of the VCS for REDD+ projects.

The assessment found that the new methodology is an improvement to the previous methodologies but could still lead to considerable overestimation. We identified weaknesses with regards to the determination of the baseline, the project boundary, the quantification of carbon stocks and the consideration of leakage. Due to these aspects, the methodology was assigned the lowest CCQI Score of 1, implying a high degree of overestimation (more than 30%).