Assessment of VCS consolidated REDD methodology

Here are some key takeaways

• Verra’s new avoided deforestation methodology, VM0048, will eventually replace all existing VCS REDD methodologies. However, several types of projects, such as sustainable forest management and avoided planned deforestation and degradation, are not eligible to use this new methodology until future updates.

• Key changes include the methods and data used for setting project baselines, the use of jurisdictional data and risk maps to align with broader jurisdictional trends in deforestation, and improvements to the assessment of activity-shifting leakage.

• Projects may have to compensate for historical over-crediting, depending on the new baselines set under this methodology. BeZero’s dynamic baselines help to foresee which projects could be affected.

• While there are many improvements to the methodology, we find that there is still the potential for over- or under-crediting at the project level. Independent baseline assessments remain essential to determining credit quality and driving further methodological improvement.