A news investigation into Zimbabwe's Kariba Forest protection project, managed by South Pole, revealed a possible substantial overstatement of the climate goals achieved through this ambitious undertaking. South Pole, a carbon credit offset seller based in Zurich, claimed it safeguarded a forest comparable in size to Puerto Rico, stating it had effectively prevented its annihilation. The investigation published on 24 March 2023 by Bloomberg, indicates that these assertions were greatly exaggerated.

Bloomberg interviewed researchers from leading organisations that stated that the Kariba project produced far fewer carbon credits than claimed by South Pole. One of them, Elias Arey, chief scientist at carbon ratings firm Renoster, approached by Bloomberg, estimated the discrepancy as much as 30 times. Another rating firm put the factor at five to eight. As a result, clients, including big names such as Nestle, Gucci, and others, unwittingly inflated their own climate action goals. In an opinion piece sent to Bloomberg, South Pole rejected that the project is over-credited and said that the Kariba offsets are legitimate. However, the project accounts show that the money that was paid for the project did not result in additional value. The early predictions of deforestation that it should have prevented are greatly exaggerated, and the company sold credits for preserving trees that were never truly at risk. In other words, the project did little to reduce emissions, as it claims.

The South Pole CEO wrote in response to the Bloomberg investigation that credit estimation is based on Verra VM09 calculation developed by Verra. He added that this methodology has a built-in self-correcting mechanism over the period of the project, which is 30 years. However, a nine-month investigation led by The Guardian questions the accuracy of Verra-approved carbon credits in other projects by stating that as much as more than 90 per cent of carbon offsets are “worthless”. In connection to the Kariba project, documents seen by SourceMaterial, who collaborated with the Guardian, suggested that the initial estimation of 52 million tons of carbon emission filling into Verra registry by South Pole was inflated to 197 million tons.

Even more troubling to some customers, the recent financial details published by the company show that most of the €100 million from the company ended up with the South Pole and its partner companies – not to the people and rural communities that are actually doing the work of deforestation. This goes in contrast to the public statement made by the company in which it stressed that: “the local communities living in the Kariba project area are the owners and main beneficiaries of the project.”

According to Bloomberg, South Pole announced it will keep 25 per cent of the sales of Kariba credits in return for technical and marketing work. Another 30 per cent will go to Carbon Green Investments (CGI). However, after the news outlet pressed for details on the number, the report shows it has kept 42 per cent of the Kariba project proceeds.

This discrepancy raises further doubts about the company's commitment to its stated objective of benefiting local communities and highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in allocating funds within the project.