What a hold leaves behind

Verra puts a project on hold or withdraws it, and nothing downstream changes: the credits stay in accounts, stay listed on exchanges, and keep being retired into corporate claims. Measured from Verra's public registry on 21 Oct 2026.

Measured, last 12 months

1.73Mtonnes retired from 290 projects on hold or withdrawn, in 696 retirements

63%of those tonnes name no public beneficiary, so the claim they back cannot be traced

22.6Mcredits from these projects still held in registry accounts

9.72Mof them listed on exchanges

On hold: 32 projects

Credits still held: 15,262,830
Listed on exchanges: 7,186,766
Retired, 12 months: 1,162,212 t in 407 retirements
No public beneficiary: 786,945 t
Projects still retired from: 19

Withdrawn: 258 projects

Credits still held: 7,292,724
Listed on exchanges: 2,530,176
Retired, 12 months: 562,798 t in 289 retirements
No public beneficiary: 303,781 t
Projects still retired from: 17

Most retired while on hold or withdrawn

The fifteen projects with the most tonnes retired in the last 12 months. A hold or withdrawal is the registry's status, not a finding of fraud; it means integrity is in question and buyers are not told.

Project	Status	Retired, 12 mo (t)	No beneficiary	Listed on exchanges	Last retired
Rio Anapu-Pacaja REDD Project VCS 2252, Brazil	On hold	269,576	3%	2,531,411	17 Sep 2026
Pacajai REDD+ Project VCS 981, Brazil	On hold	256,688	73%	1,224,552	20 Oct 2026
PrairieWinds ND1 (PWND1) Emissions Reduction Project VCS 740, United States of America	Withdrawn	127,369	5%	113,953	7 Oct 2026
Inner Mongolia Chao’er Improved Forest Management Project VCS 1529, Mainland China	On hold	122,695	100%	0	1 Jul 2026
Improving rural livelihood through agroforestry practices in Punjab, India- I VCS 2552, India	On hold	117,013	100%	5,208	5 May 2026
Qianbei Afforestation Project VCS 2082, Mainland China	Withdrawn	115,538	64%	479,859	16 Oct 2026
Improving rural livelihood through agroforestry practices in Punjab, India- II VCS 2555, India	On hold	98,161	100%	0	1 Apr 2026
Liangdu Afforestation Project VCS 2083, Mainland China	Withdrawn	76,674	10%	50,226	17 Sep 2026
Fujian Yong’an Improved Forest Management Project VCS 1577, Mainland China	On hold	72,319	100%	0	29 May 2026
Yunnan Kunming Liangqu Improved Forest Management Project VCS 1542, Mainland China	On hold	65,212	100%	0	22 May 2026
Distribution of energy efficient cookstoves in India-2 VCS 3158, India	Withdrawn	59,496	100%	0	23 Sep 2026
Tuppadahalli Wind Energy Project VCS 924, India	Withdrawn	48,577	100%	0	27 Jan 2026
Fazenda Sao Paulo Afforestation VCS 1663, Brazil	On hold	40,988	100%	0	5 Feb 2026
Kariba REDD+ Project VCS 902, Zimbabwe	Withdrawn	32,500	98%	770,163	9 Oct 2026
Chudu Afforestation Project VCS 2087, Mainland China	Withdrawn	28,542	88%	4,500	19 Oct 2026

What changes with Recourse

The unit of impact is tonnes of claims that are refused or flagged before they are counted, and money returned when a recall lands. These are the mechanics, applied to the measured numbers.

Claims refused at the point of use

Every one of the 696 retirements above would have been refused by the credit gate when registered as a claim, because the registry status was a hold or a withdrawal. That is 1.73M t of offsetting claims a year that a buyer would have been told about before reporting.

Projection from measured registry data; assumes the claim is registered through the gate.

Listings halted by integrators

An exchange or tokenizer that asks the gate before listing would stop selling the 9.72M listed credits of these projects until the status is resolved. For the 7 projects tracked on-chain today, 4,722,521 listed credits are already refused.

Tracked count is measured on-chain; the 290-project figure is what tracking them all would cover.

Money back on a recall

With a warranty holdback, a buyer of Kariba credits would have been refunded 56.74% of the price, capped at the holdback, the moment the over-issuance finding was confirmed. Today, buyers of credits later found over-issued get nothing back.

Run a recall and refund on the drill

Sources and method

Totals come from Verra's public registry data on the S&P Global platform: every project with status On Hold or Withdrawn, their holdings by state (listed on exchange or active, buffer excluded) and every retirement since 21 Oct 2025. The snapshot is committed with its hash: impact-snapshot.json, sha256 0xd2e9a3ce68c557eea014c91235d1bacf38e3f011656c70bd6207bcce40890141. Per-project files for the tracked projects: subjects.

Context, not used in the numbers above: a 2024 study of 2,346 projects found fewer than 16% of credits issued represent real emission reductions (Probst et al., Nature Communications 2024); for REDD+ projects, a 2023 study found most credits were not additional (West et al., Science 2023).