Grouped Project Design Under VCS

Updated 2026-11-02 · 4 min read · By the akar.earth specialist team

Grouped project VCS guide: geographic areas, eligibility criteria and project activity instances, and how to design a grouped ARR project in Indonesia.

A grouped project under the VCS Program is one registered project that can keep growing after validation by adding new project activity instances, such as additional farms or planting blocks, as long as each meets eligibility criteria fixed in the validated project description. It is the standard structure for smallholder and multi-site ARR and agroforestry projects, because it lets fixed costs be shared while the project scales.

Core building blocks

The exact requirements sit in the current VCS Standard and VCS Methodology Requirements. Verra issued version 5.0 of these documents in December 2025, with v4.x documents remaining active until 1 July 2027 according to Verra’s listings. Check which version applies to your project timeline.

Designing eligibility criteria

Good criteria are specific enough to protect integrity and simple enough to verify for each new farm. Typical criteria for an Indonesian ARR or agroforestry grouped project:

1. Located within a defined geographic area (e.g. named districts).
2. Land was non-forest at the start date and not cleared of native ecosystems in the prior ten years. See land eligibility.
3. Landholder has documented tenure or use rights, and has signed an agreement with consent.
4. Planting follows the approved species and design list.
5. Baseline land use falls within defined categories (e.g. grassland, annual cropland).
6. Not registered in any other GHG programme or under another carbon claim.
7. Not on peat or within protected areas, if the methodology or design excludes them.
8. Monitoring can be carried out under the project’s protocol.

Each criterion needs an evidence source a VVB can check at verification.

Step by step

1. Choose the methodology, usually VM0047 for ARR, and decide area-based or census-based approach.
2. Define geographic areas using administrative, ecological or watershed boundaries.
3. Set baseline and additionality for each area.
4. Write eligibility criteria and the evidence for each.
5. Enrol initial instances with full documentation.
6. Prepare the grouped project design document and get it validated.
7. Add instances over time, documenting each against the criteria.
8. At each verification, the VVB checks new instances and monitoring for all instances.

Grouped projects and smallholders

Grouping is the main route for smallholder aggregation. The aggregator acts as the project proponent, holds agreements with each farmer, and manages the instance register. The register is the heart of the project: farm ID, owner, polygon, enrolment date, criteria evidence, planting records and monitoring data.

Planning the instance register

The instance register is the operational core of a grouped project. Each row is a farm or block with a stable ID, owner, polygon, geographic area, enrolment date, verification period of inclusion, evidence links for each criterion, planting and monitoring records, and status (active, exited, reversed). Build it as a database rather than a spreadsheet, with version history, because it will be audited at every verification and will grow for years. A clean register is also what lets the same data serve national registration in SRUK and EUDR due diligence.

Common mistakes

• Criteria too vague (“degraded land”) to verify consistently.
• Geographic areas drawn too large, so one baseline covers very different conditions.
• Adding instances without full evidence and hoping the VVB samples elsewhere.
• No plan for instances that leave the project; reversals must be handled.
• Mixing instances under different methodology versions without checking the rules.
• Forgetting double-counting checks against other programmes and national registries.

What good evidence looks like

For each instance, a VVB will expect: location and polygon; enrolment date; evidence for each eligibility criterion (land history imagery, tenure, consent, no other claims); planting records; and monitoring data. For the group: the instance register, procedures for inclusion, QA/QC records, and a summary of instances added since the last verification.

Indonesian considerations

Grouped projects that span social forestry areas, private land and village land face different tenure rules for each. Domestic registration and authorisation steps also apply; see Indonesia regulation and the VCS registration process. Design data systems that can report the same instances to Verra and to SRUK.

Our PDD development service writes grouped project descriptions and eligibility criteria. See the ARR hub for the full project path.