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Nhambita Community Carbon Project An exemplar of best social-forestry practice Envirotrade’s test bed for our Carbon Livelihoods Programme is in the buffer zone of the Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. This unique groundbreaking pilot project has been set up in the Nhambita community in Central Mozambique, in collaboration with the Sofala Provincial Government, the Gorongosa National Park and the local Nhambitha community. The project follows the international Plan Vivo system for community carbon sequestration that functions successfully in Mexico, Bhutan and Uganda. The project, situated in the buffer zone surrounding the national park has received technical support from the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, Edinburgh University and additional funding from DFID and the EU.
Gorongosa National Park , established in 1921, was the former conservation jewel of colonial Mozambique . It was ravaged by years of civil war and many of the large bovine species have been pushed to near extinction. During the civil war, refugees invaded the park and the animal’s shot to supply the bush-meat markets in the nearest city, Beira. Illegal logging also took place in the park. When peace returned to Mozambique the government appointed a dynamic young engineer, Roberto Zolho, to rebuild the shattered infrastructure and restore the areas once thriving tourism industry. Zolho, who studied environmental management in Australia, embarked on an ambitious scheme to draw the people out of the park into a controlled buffer zone of economic activity and development and take the pressure off resources inside the park. (The "Human Fence" collaborative approach to conservation).
The government's national reconstruction programme has de-mined forest areas, repaired roads and bridges but that in turn has opened up formerly inaccessible areas to further illegal logging, extensive charcoal production and rapid deforestation. Local communities, anxious to plant and trade crops and generate income have added to the deforestation and degraded the natural bio-diversity. In the past four years, hundreds of hectares of land in this area have been reduced to an infertile wasteland due to the traditional slash and burn policies of local farmers and charcoal production. Gorongosa has the highest biodiversity in Mozambique because of its unique physical structure, relief and different vegetation types. It has some 74 different vegetation systems, 15 geological formations and 40 soil types. This has given rise to an extraordinarily rich flora with thousands of different species; a high species diversity of reptiles, frogs and fish, an avifauna of 500 or more species; 25 wild ungulate species including seven miniature antelope; six primates and three galagos. The aim of the project: to work in partnership with 1000 local householders who live within 31,000 hectares of land in the buffer zone of the Gorongosa National Park, and demonstrate the environmental, economic, social and benefits that can be delivered by implementing a 'best practice' business-enterprise. The community association plays an important role in the project and will receive training, resources and funding to become custodians of the forest resource. The project will be rolled out throughout the buffer zone and other environmentally sensitive and degraded sites in Africa and the developing world.
The project involves: Reforesting abandoned "mashambas" (areas of land "slashed and burned " for crop planting and deserted due to soil degradation) with indigenous Miombo woodland trees, primarily local fruit and bee-fodder species, and other selected trees along watersheds to help stabilise the riverbanks. Working with local people who contract with the project to plant and maintain trees amongst their crops and around their homesteads. Participants in the project are paid for carbon stored by the trees they plant, forest they manage and fire they prevent. The project has sold over 500 000 tC02 to clients that include Creative Artists Agency of Los Angeles, the MAN Group, U&W, IIED and the Live Earth Concert in Johannesburg.
Targeting deforested areas within the next five years with a programme of habitat-restoration re-establishing Miombo woodland, enhancing biodiversity and working with the National Park administration to restore the park to its former status as Mozambique's premier wildlife park. Mozambique has suffered enormously as a result of global climate change and environmental degradation with devastating floods exacerbated by the destruction of forests in the watershed areas of its watershed areas of its major rivers. The project sets out to demonstrate that it is possible to address these issues in a sustainable manner. The project addresses the many of the major objection voiced by critics of the carbon market and demonstrates that sustainable eco-development can be enterprise-driven and bring benefit to all participants. The Nhambita Carbon Project is a best practices solution to carbon storage. ECCM has brought its expertise in driving the internationally recognized Plan Vivo system that is successfully functioning in Central America (Mexico), Asia (India) and Africa (Uganda) to this project partnership and the considerable experience derived from these projects is built into the Nhambita proposal. Envirotrade works closely with other NGO's such as WWF, GTZ, ORAM and Food for the Hungry. Envirotrade advocates the preservation and restoration of natural vegetation and wildlife in targeted areas because we believe that the species that evolved to survive in marginal environments are often the only ones that will thrive there. In order to survive people in developing countries often destroy native species to plant crops and grow food. We cooperate with communities to develop alternative strategies implementing agro-forestry techniques, fuel-wood production, afforestation and sustainable utilization of timber and non-timer forest products to preserve and restore these environments and thereby sequester carbon.
A Carbon Trust to Safeguard Carbon Income The Mozambique Carbon Livelihoods Trust (MCLT) was launched in 2007 to ensure that the community and individual farmer proceeds of carbon offset sales from Carbon Livelihoods projects in Mozambique were safeguarded. Approximately one third of the proceeds of any carbon sale go directly to this fund and are paid out to individual farmers over seven years, to the community trust funds annually and in other payments for forest management and conservation. The MCLT board is made up of stakeholders - a representative of each elected community association participating in a project, Envirotrade Lda and WWF Mozambique - and is responsible for ensuring that the funds are properly managed and payments made. A Beira based auditing company, Contabil, are responsible for the day to day administration of the fund. The Trust will publish an annual report and its transactions will be monitored by BioClimate Research and Development (BR&D), an Edinburgh based organisation responsible for the Plan Vivo certification as part of its ongoing monitoring of standards and requirements for compliance. The Carbon Livelihoods Trust will work closely with associated community associations to ensure that the sustainable livelihoods are built and that far reaching land-use change takes place in target communities in and around protected areas.
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| Chicare (Nhambita) Regulado |
The Chicare Regulado (traditional community) is situated within the Gorongosa Administrative District of Sofala Province in central Mozambique. It covers an area of approximately 20,000 hectares and has three administrative zones; Nhambita, Mussinhawa, Nhanganha and a small region known as Boa Maria which was previously a cotton production and export area.
The boundaries of the Regulado are formed by the Gorongosa National Park (situated beyond the Boa Maria road branching from the main Villa de Gorongosa/Inchope road leading to Chitengo), the Pungue River and the next Regulado to the west of Chicare. The small rivers Rapise and Nhambita run through the Regulado. The area is covered with Miombo type forest, however homesteads and mashamaba’s (slash and burn plots) have been cleared for housing and agricultural purposesand recently more and more areas have been cleared in illegal charcoal production operations. When the national park was formalised in the 1950’s and 60’s many indigenous communities living within the park area were given one year’s tax exemption by the central government to assist with relocation to areas outside the park. Chicare Regulado was one of the relocation areas[xiii]. It is situated within the southern ‘buffer zone’ of Gorongosa National Park . The buffer zone is a designated area that surrounds the entire park, extending between 10 and 20Km in diameter. There are approximately 100 000 people living in the buffer zone. Communities
and individuals living in the buffer zone are subject to certain rules
and regulations set out in a government ordinance that restricts resource
utilisation. For example, hunting and gathering is only allowed for subsistence
purposes and certain species of trees are protected by law Nhambita itself
is much less densely populated, the 1997 census recorded a population of
612 people from 102 family units in Chicare. The return of displacees and economic
migrants has swelled this number in recent years to approximately 10000.
Settlement patterns in Chicare are dispersed and there are no real concentrations
of population although in the area surrounding the homestead and tribal
court of the Regulo a number of households and one of Chicare Regulados
schools are grouped together. The community has no infrastructure, the
planned drilling of a borehole was never completed, roads are un-surfaced
and virtually impassable during the rainy season and the schools are poorly
constructed with no service provision at all.
Opportunities for employment in the community were almost non-existent and research carried out during the GERFRA study revealed real levels of poverty. Farming was predominantly on a subsistence basis and is limited by scarce resources, a lack of expertise and vulnerable to environmental factors such as drought and flooding. Those farmers who do produce surplus are isolated from markets and the absence of meaningful transport means that they are not able to market their produce. The research indicated that illness in the area was linked to protein deficiencies and malnutrition during periods of the year when food was scarce. This has led local people to enter the growing charcoal production sector. Depletion of forest resources by charcoal producers who utilise forest resources in an unsustainable manner is increasingly evident in certain wards in the regulado. Attempts by the Regulo and the state government to regulate and control charcoal production have largely failed and given the absence of any real opportunities for income generation in the area these attempts are unlikely so be successful. The growing population of Beira provides a ready market for the charcoal and the rebuilding of bridges and improved infrastructure has stimulated production.
Envirotrade and the Nhambita Community Association have cooperated in a “learning through doing” pilot exercise to raise awareness about carbon management and the conservation of trees. This pilot phase, which is almost completed, consists of planting of indigenous trees on forest land cleared for agricultural purposes to demonstrate that trees and agriculture can co-exist. Sixty two mashamba (slash and burn plots) owners signed up for this phase of the project. Their mashambas have been mapped and a detailed profile developed of data relating to land use and other physical information. A training workshop was held in the Gorongosa National Park with participants and community leaders and objectives identified for this phase. Mashamaba owners have participated in this process that includes consultation and planting of some 10 000 trees of appropriate and desired species. The trees were grown from seeds collected in the area and germinated in a nursery in the area. Species include indigenous fruit trees, fuel wood and nitrogen fixing species. A portion of the carbon sequestered has been purchased by a United Kingdom based client and recently Creative Artists Agency, a US based company purchased 55 000 tCO2 offsets from the project. This has enabled the project to go into the second phase of carbon sequestration and a programme of forest management has been intitiated in the community forests. This involves replanting of degraded portions with indigenous trees, enrichment planting of high-graded areas and most significantly a comprehensive fire management programme which is being monitored by the University of Edinburgh and GTZ. This will bring direct income from forest conservation to the community fund. A total of mashamba systems have been registered up for the agroforestry component of the project bringing the level of participation in the project up to approximately 70%.
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