Scope and engagement conditions
Types of operations, commissioning environments, declined mandates, engagement conditions.
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Doctrine
Firm positions
Short, decision-oriented public positions issued by DOUZEROCINQ CONSEILS. They inform the mandates the firm accepts and the arrangements it declines. They bind the firm.
§ I · Climate
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement and the risk of double counting
The firm takes the view that the value of a carbon credit rests first on the integrity of its accounting base. A credit whose host country simultaneously claims contribution to its NDC — without a corresponding adjustment — and which a foreign buyer books on its own balance sheet is economically suspect and, over time, legally fragile.
Accordingly, the firm does not accompany arrangements built on ambiguity around the credit's status. Every advisory mission on a Verra VCS, ART‑TREES or Article 6-linked project includes an explicit paragraph on the treatment of the corresponding adjustment, the host-country authorisation regime, and plausible declassification scenarios. This requirement applies irrespective of the commissioning party — project developer, development bank, corporate buyer, or host country.
The firm favours the ICVCM CCP and ART‑TREES frameworks as complementary reading filters, absent a stabilised unified standard. Clients expecting a written minimisation of these risks are referred to another firm.
Sources: Paris Agreement · Art. 6.2 and 6.4 · ICVCM Core Carbon Principles · Verra VCS Standard v4.7 · ART‑TREES v2.0.
§ II · Business law
OHADA and the treatment of intangible assets
The OHADA Uniform Act on commercial companies and economic interest groupings, as revised in 2014, allows contributions in kind of intangible assets subject to valuation by a contribution auditor. The firm nonetheless observes that next-generation intangibles — unissued carbon credits, data rights, dematerialised management mandates, project tokens — give rise in practice to overvaluations, accommodation arrangements and, in case of dispute, to hardly predictable judicial outcomes.
The firm defends a position of drafting prudence: every contribution or transfer of an intangible asset within the OHADA space should be accompanied by a written valuation methodology, explicit value bounds, an adjustment clause in the event of non-materialisation, and an exit regime in the event of downward revision. Such documentation is longer to produce and costlier to negotiate, but it protects the transferor, the transferee and the receiving legal entity.
Arrangements that rest on the absence of documentation — « value agreed between the parties » without methodology — are systematically declined.
Sources: OHADA Uniform Act on commercial companies and the EIG (revised 30 January 2014) · Uniform Act on accounting law and financial reporting (2017) · Consolidated CCJA case law.
§ III · Professional ethics
Gracious mandates and right of reference use
The firm accompanies, on a pro bono basis and within a capped annual volume, emerging structures whose access to strategic advisory is limited — associations, young OHADA groups, public initiatives. This commitment is consubstantial with the firm's vocation. It is neither a communications device nor a commercial adjustment variable.
The firm's position is that every gracious mandate, without exception, carries a dedicated article titled Right of use in firm reference. This standalone article authorises DOUZEROCINQ CONSEILS to mention the existence of the mandate, its general object and its deliverables, in anonymised or nominative form as the parties agree. The article is drafted as explicit economic consideration for the absence of fees, so as to prevent later requalification by the URSSAF, the French tax authority or any attesting third party — and to preserve contractual balance within the meaning of article 1169 of the French Civil Code.
The absence of this article in a gracious engagement letter is a blocking material defect. No work is undertaken in its absence. This rule applies with equal rigour to public partners, partner associations, and members of the principal's personal sphere.
Sources: French Civil Code · Art. 1169 · French Labour Code · Art. L. 8221‑3 and L. 8221‑5 · DOUZEROCINQ internal charter § 11.9.