Indpendent validation and verification is critical to ensuring the integrity and quality of the projects registered under the Peatland Code.
The Peatland Code Executive Board sets out the eligibliy critieria for validation and verification bodies wishing to validate and verify Peatland Code projects. Only approved VVB's by the Peatland Code Executive Board are able to carry out validation/verification for Peatland Code projects. Performance of validation/verification bodies shall be monitored by the Executive Board and underperformance may lead to being suspended from validating or verifying Peatland Code projects.
Peatland Code Approved VVB:
The following VVB's have been approved by the Peatland Code Exective Board to validate and verify Peatland Code projects.
These VVB are accredited under the sectoral scope of Agriculture Forestry Other Land Use (AFOLU) to ISO/IEC 17029:2019 Conformity assessment – General requirements for verification and validation bodies and sector application ISO/14065:2020 General principles and requirements for bodies validating and verifying environmental information. These VVB's are currently in the process of extending their UKAS accreditation (extension of scope) to include the Peatland Code. See UKAS pilot below for more information.
Pending Accrediation
SAC Consulting was appointed by the Peatland Code Executive Board as a VVB in September 2022. At the time, SAC Consulting met all requirements to be an approved VVBs and was working towards the required UKAS accreditation. However, as the rules in the market have changes requiring VVB's to be fully ISO accredited the Peatland Code updated the eligiblity criteria and unfortunately SAC does not meet the new accrediation requirement. Therefore, while SAC is applying to UKAS for accrediation the Peatland Code Exective Board have paused SAC accepting any new Peatland Code projects until UKAS accrediation to the ISO standards has been achieved.
The UKAS Pilot:
In order to maintain integrity and bring increased confidence to buyers of Peatland Code carbon credits ISO 14065:2020 will be used as the governing standard for Peatland Code validation and verification delivery with details provided in ISO 14064-3:2019 .
The Pilot Scheme aims to provide assurance that Peatland Code projects and their GHG assertion will be validated and verified by an accredited independent validation/verification body. Some Validation and Verification body may already hold ISO 17029:2019 and will be just extending their scope to cover the Peatland Code other VVB may require a longer application to cover the full suite of ISO standard outlined here.
There are three scopes that validation/verification bodies can be accredited for:
Scope 1 is the head office assessment where all of the conformity assessments take place such as reviewing staff training, quality systems database and policies This usually takes place in person, however if the validation/verification body already holds UKAS accreditation for other schemes it can be carried out online.
Scope 2: Is for restoration validation and this is carried out via a witness audit.
Scope 3 Is for year 5 verification which is also carried out as a witness audit.
Why does the Peatland Code require UKAS Accreditation ?
We want to ensure that:
- Peatland Code projects are validated and verified to the same level of scrutiny from all three validation/verification bodies, that their systems and processes are up to date and that they are best place to issue the GHG option statements and GHG assertions.
- Interpretation of the scheme requirements between the validation and verification bodies remains the same.
For any information related to UKAS or Accreditation please contact our Peatland Code Development Manager: Garance Wood-Moulin, GWMoulin@iucn.org.uk
