IN villages dotted across the African continent, locals living in once-heavily forested regions are starting to find their land in high demand.
In Kenya’s Gazi Bay, arguably the continent’s most famous mangrove restoration project, thousands of trees have been planted thanks to nearly a decade of concerted efforts to offset carbon dioxide released by faraway governments and companies seeking to improve their climate credentials. The initiative was one of Africa’s first steps into the carbon market, where credits to emit greenhouse gases can be bought or sold.
Since then, dozens of similar schemes have sprouted across the continent, with African governments now looking to capitalise on this exploding global industry. The continent is home to huge swaths of carbon-absorbing lands, with forest covering roughly 674 million hectares, or 22.7 percent, of Africa, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The Cuvette-Centrale Peatlands deep in the Congo Basin are alone capable of locking in up to 30 billion tons of carbon, or three years’ worth of the world’s emissions.
Waterside mangrove forests, which are more effective at sucking carbon out of the air than their land counterparts, have swelled in places like Gazi. Community-led voluntary initiatives in Kenya, Mozambique and Ivory Coast that restore thousands of hectares of forest are supported by large international carbon credit organizations such as Blue Forest and the World Resources Institute.
‘The carbon market is changing everything,’ said Vahid Fotuhi, founder of the Blue Forest initiative, at the Africa Climate Week conference in Gabon in early September. ‘Suddenly, trees are worth more alive than dead. By tapping into carbon markets, communities … can access carbon offset funding which helps them conserve their forests whilst also improving livelihoods. It is a win-win.’
Although many of these carbon credit schemes are based in Africa, where emissions are far lower and the consequences of climate change far greater than many other parts of the world, the continent remains largely excluded from the carbon market.
Between 2002 and 2020 just 14 percent of all the carbon credits issued came from Africa. In 2021, Gabon became the first African country to receive payments from the Central African Forest Initiative for reducing carbon emissions through forest protection, a total of $17 million so far.
Carbon markets can be voluntary or set by international policies, known as regulatory compliance. In voluntary schemes, which are more advanced in Africa, companies that wish to generate carbon credits must hire independent third party verifiers to confirm that carbon emissions would have been released were it not for the credit.