This quality assessment by the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project examines the effectiveness of REDD+ carbon crediting programmes at reducing deforestation, generating high-quality carbon credits, and protecting forest communities.

The report is focused on the four crediting methodologies that have generated almost all REDD+ carbon credits to date, all under Verra, the largest voluntary carbon market registry, and concludes that REDD+ is ill-suited to carbon crediting.

Headline findings demonstrate that over-crediting is widespread, that project developers are granted significant flexibility, and that social safeguard policies and outcomes could be more stringent. Validation and Verification Bodies could do more to ensure that accurate or conservative emissions calculations are considered, whilst the data and assumptions used by developers in their calculations could be made more available.

Read the associated CMW briefing.