Our answers to REDD-Monitor's ten questions

Published 18 September 2026. In August and September 2026, Chris Lang of REDD-Monitor put ten questions to Evertreen and said he would publish our response in full and unedited. These are our answers, published here at the same time so anyone can read them in full rather than in excerpt. Where a question led us to change something, the change is described in the answer and can be checked on this site.

1. The “Reforestation in Indonesia” page, and what was sold there

Indonesia: 20,926 units funded since 2020. 16,756 of those are Katingan Mentaya (VCS 1477) and 4,170 are mangroves.

We should be precise about Katingan, because it goes to your question 9. It is a REDD+ peatland conservation project. A contribution there funds the retirement of a verified carbon credit on the Verra registry — it does not plant a tree. The retirement is always made on the registry; where a client wants the registry's own retirement confirmation and certificate issued in their name, they ask us and provide the retirement reason and an email address, and it is issued by the registry itself. That product had been classified under the tree section of our shop; it is now named "Katingan Mentaya, Indonesia — Verra VCS 1477 (REDD+ peatland)" and sits in our certified-credit pages, with thirteen others that were classified the same way.

The mangrove product is different: that is tree planting, funded through Reforest Now on Biak Island. It was withdrawn when the partner could no longer commit to the annual volume our listing requires. We stop selling rather than promise delivery we cannot guarantee.

The page you archived was retired when we restructured our project pages. We have not stopped working in Indonesia. Where a product is no longer offered, we keep its page published rather than remove it, so the record of what was funded stays available.

Tonnes: we have never sold a carbon credit against tree planting. A tree product carries a modelled lifetime CO2 estimate, stated as an estimate; our checkout lets a client express a contribution either as trees or as tonnes, but in the tree-planting case no credit is issued and nothing is retired on any registry. A certified credit — a unit retired against a serial number — is a separate product.

Monitoring: trees already funded remain monitored by the local partner, who remains active at the site. Our agreements provide for monitoring to continue after we stop selling new planting there. We do not claim monitoring in perpetuity — if a partner ceased operating at a site we would transfer monitoring to another local organisation or tell the customers affected.

2. The “Restoration in India” page

India: 26,302 trees funded since 2020, planted by the Arbor Day Foundation and Venuza across multiple sites in Karnataka. India was one of our earliest programmes. We publish the region rather than plot-level coordinates because planting is distributed across smallholder farmers' own land; the marker on our map indicates the area, not a single site.

The product was withdrawn from our listings for the same reason as the Indonesian mangroves — the partner reached capacity — and, as above, it has now been properly retired rather than merely hidden.

Monitoring continues on the same basis described in answer 1.

Tonnes: as in answer 1, no carbon credit was issued or retired against Indian tree planting. The figure shown alongside the product was a modelled lifetime CO2 estimate.

To be precise about our dates: the date we record against a tree is the date of funding. Planting follows the local season, typically one to six months later — you cannot plant in a Canadian winter. Our counter therefore measures trees funded, and we have relabelled it accordingly.

3. The CO₂ figures

These are two different metrics.

The 3,025,356 t figure was a lifetime estimate: the total the trees we have funded are expected to sequester across their full functional lives, often several decades. It was labelled "absorbed"; it is now labelled as a lifetime estimate.

The 82,618 t figure was a different measure: CO2 absorbed to date, rather than across a tree's whole life. Young trees have absorbed a small fraction of what they are expected to absorb, which is why the two numbers are far apart. The site now shows both and labels which is which, and the to-date figure is derived from each tree model's expected lifetime sequestration and the elapsed share of that lifetime.

The site now shows both, labelled distinctly: a lifetime estimate, and a CO2-absorbed-to-date figure that grows year on year. The method is published at evertreen.com/how-we-estimate-tree-co2. We have also corrected customer forest pages that labelled the lifetime total as tonnes "being offset".

One further thing you may notice if you divide the totals, so we would rather say it than have it found: the implied per-tree lifetime figure has moved, from about 0.97 tonnes in December 2025 to about 0.81 now. The method did not change. One tree model in our database carried a per-tree figure of 900 tonnes where it should have read 0.9 — a data-entry error, not a modelling one. Correcting it reduced the site-wide lifetime total and brought the average back in line with what the published method produces. The affected customer records were rebuilt at the same time.

On refunds: customers who funded tree planting received what they paid for — trees funded and planted, with a modelled CO2 estimate presented as an estimate. No carbon credit was issued against those purchases and none was withdrawn. The two figures you are comparing are site-wide totals; neither was the basis of an individual sale, and the change is to how we present them, not to what any customer received.

4. Pricing

Our published plans are Startup £150/month for 100 newly planted trees each month, Growth £300 for 200, and Enterprise £900 for 600 — £1.50 per tree at each tier. The same flat per-tree rate is what we offer companies entering larger partnerships. One-off purchases are priced differently: our subscription rate is discounted to reward recurring support. Prices also differ by currency, and negotiated corporate pricing will not always match a published figure.

Our earlier reply said the £100/£500/£1,000 figures were "not our prices". We withdraw that statement: it was meant to convey that we do not operate a single price list, and it was too absolute as written. Your screenshot shows what our page displayed on 18 December 2025. Our pricing is held in our platform database rather than in versioned files, so we cannot reconstruct that page from records.

5. The refund clause

Section 7 was amended on 9 June 2026.

It was amended so that our online terms state the refund position we already applied in practice and already offered companies under negotiated contracts. We review our terms at monthly operational meetings and this was one of the improvements identified.

We are not aware of any customer having been refused a refund under the old clause; we process refunds routinely through Stripe.

The same wording was present in our subscription PDF, the document a subscriber signs. It has been removed.

6. Projects under review

Our Brazil page named the Evergreen REDD+ Project (VCS 2539) and the Rio Anapu-Pacajá REDD Project (VCS 2252), both "On Hold" on the Verra registry, along with Fortaleza Ituxi (1654) and Unitor (2508). None was purchasable. Each page now carries its registry status and the date it was checked.

Our Zimbabwe page described the Kariba REDD+ Project (VCS 902) as certified under Verra; Kariba's registry status is Withdrawn, and that page now carries the correct status.

On process: we review registry status with our legal team, through contact with the standards bodies, and by manual registry checks. That process was looking for suspension and withdrawal, and was checking pages that take payment. It was not catching "On Hold" or "Under Review" states on pages that are editorial rather than transactional. It now covers every registry state and every page.

We also re-checked everything we currently list, on 16 September 2026. Vida Manglar (VCS 2290) is "Late to Verify"; Tambopata (1067), Matavén (1566) and Conservation Coast (1622) show "Verification approval requested". Those states are now shown on the pages rather than left for a reader to discover. Chestnut Carbon, which is at Gold Standard Certified Design stage and has never issued a credit, has been removed from sale and from our Gold Standard listing.

7. Implementing partners

We contract with partner organisations, who deliver planting with local implementers and farmers. Our contracted partners, by country:

  • Madagascar — Tsiryparma (Vohidahy, Ambositra region)
  • Italy — zeroCO2 and GoForest, delivered on the ground by Soulfood Forestfarms Hub Italia and the agricultural cooperative CasciNet, on public land held under a 30-year concession from the Comune di Milano
  • United Kingdom — Arbor Day Foundation and GoForest (two sites, in Cheshire and the East Midlands)
  • United States — Arbor Day Foundation
  • India — Arbor Day Foundation and Venuza (Karnataka)
  • Australia — Reforest Now (Northern Rivers, New South Wales, across some 23 localities including Doon Doon, Newrybar, Teven, Rosebank and Clunes). Our earlier Australian planting, which the photographs in our gallery come from, was at Monash Street, El Arish, in Northern Queensland.
  • Indonesia — Reforest Now (Biak Island)
  • Spain — Ona Futura (Balearic Islands)
  • Mexico — Restoration Era (Quintana Roo). AMBIO delivered our Mexican planting through the Scolel'te programme in Chiapas until 2026; that partnership has ended and our pages have been updated.
  • Brazil — Restoration Era
  • Nepal — Restoration Era
  • Honduras and Kenya — Eden Projects. These countries are no longer included in our plans; trees already funded there remain with the partner that planted them.

To be precise about how the three parts of our work differ: in Madagascar we work directly with local farmers on reforestation; in our other planting countries we work through the local organisations listed above; and certified carbon credits are purchased from third-party projects and resold, with Evertreen acting as an intermediary and not as the project developer.

Our terms previously said we work with local communities "rather than through third-party charities", which did not describe that structure accurately. It has been rewritten.

8. Monitoring evidence

To state it precisely: monitoring varies by site and by partner. Drone mapping is not available in every country we work in, as our About page notes, and our transparency page now says the same.

Rather than restate a general claim, here is the full record for one site — the Vohidahy Forest Project in Madagascar:

We would rather state a limit than imply there is none: that page says plainly that there is no registry, no carbon methodology and no third-party verifier attached to Vohidahy. It is tree planting, and we do not present it as anything else.

You asked to see a site rather than read about one, which is a fair request, so here is the more useful answer: you are welcome to visit Vohidahy. We will arrange it, you can walk the planting areas, and you can put your questions to Tsiryparma directly rather than through us. The offer is open and it does not expire with this exchange.

9. Certified credits and tree planting

Our platform sells two distinct products. Certified carbon credits are sourced from third-party projects and retired on their registries. Tree planting is funded through our local partners and is not a certified credit.

Fifteen certified-credit projects had been classified under the tree section of our shop — Conservation Coast, Katingan Mentaya, Double Bar, Matavén, GreenTrees, TIST, Humbo, Vida Manglar, Mikoko Pamoja, EcoMakala, NicaForest, WithOneSeed, Vichada, Biodiverse Forests and Chestnut Carbon. That was a classification issue in how the catalogue was organised, not a difference in what was delivered: those purchases funded certified credits, and the applicable standard was named on each project page. They now carry their project name, standard and registry ID in the product name itself, and sit in the certified-credits section.

Tree products state that they are a contribution to tree planting and not a certified carbon credit. Credit products state that a credit is retired on the project's registry, and that the registry's own retirement confirmation and certificate can be issued in the client's name on request — we need the retirement reason and an email address, and the document comes from the registry, not from us.

On clause 2.4: the wording provided for the applicable standard to be identified on request. It is now stated on the product page before purchase.

Our homepage shows trees funded and credits retired as two separate figures.

On the form at the foot of our pages: it names only Verra — it carries no Gold Standard or CBL option.

10. The remark about REDD-Monitor

We would be interested to know what was reported to you, and by whom, though we appreciate you may not wish to say.

For context: the article appeared without any prior contact between us — as you have since confirmed, we had never worked together — and there was internal speculation among our team about why it had been written.

To be unambiguous: REDD-Monitor has not requested payment from us, and we are not suggesting that it has.

Closing

REDD-Monitor states openly that it is opposed to carbon trading. We have engaged with these questions on their merits regardless.

These answers are published in full at https://www.evertreen.com/transparency/redd-monitor-questions and we have made the changes described. We will not be providing running commentary beyond this, but this page will be kept accurate and corrected if anything in it turns out to be wrong. Anyone wanting registry serials, coordinates or certificates can write to partnerships@evertreen.com.

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Last updated: 18 September 2026. This page will be corrected if anything in it turns out to be wrong, and corrections will be noted with their date.

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