Gorongosa Community Carbon Project

The fighting that took place around Gorongosa National Park in central Mozambique during the country’s 16 year civil war took a terrible toll on both the forests and the communities that had taken refuge in the forests. After the war ended in 1992, those communities continued to suffer. The agriculture had virtually collapsed; there was little or no access to medical help, education, employment, capital or markets. Food shortages accelerated the spread of disease and malnutrition.

Envirotrade joined up with the European Commission, the University of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management to help rebuild the local economy by establishing environmentally responsible farming and food production in a pilot 35,000 hectare area in the buffer zone around the park. Land-use change in the buffer zone of the protected area takes pressure off threatened natural resources and assists the rehabilitation of the park. The project works with communities to rehabilitate the forests on their land and introduce new, sustainable farming practices, such as planting new crops alongside nitrogen-fixing trees. These new practices have had a dramatic effect on the yields of cash crops such as cashews and fruits, and now provide healthy livelihoods for around 1000 families. Hundreds of other farmers have become the contracted guardians of new forests using the Plan Vivo system and receiving an income from the sale of carbon offsets by Envirotrade.

Carbon finance has brought food security and economic development on an unprecedented scale. The reforestation of communal lands has helped to raise money for community projects such as schools and other businesses, such as honey production, poultry farming and furniture-making, have established themselves with the support of carbon sales and grant aid from the European Commission. Lives and land have been transformed. Now, having brought about the rehabilitation and management of 35,000 hectares of community forest, the Envirotrade model is being adopted by communities in three other parts of the Gorongosa buffer zone.

Project status

To date Envirotrade’s flagship Nhambita project’s land use change sequestration and carbon conservation activities (calculated ex-ante over a period of 99 years for agroforestry and ex-post over a period of ten years for forest conservation systems) amount to a sum of 293,320.91 tCO₂ of which 116,807.55 tCO₂ have been certified by Plan Vivo and sold and 176,513.36 tCO 2 have yet to be certified and sold. These are currently being marketed and were certified in February 2009 by the Plan Vivo Foundation. The project activities planned in conjunction with the community are projected to sequester 2,132,715 tCO₂ over its calculation period of 99 years.

The sale of carbon offsets from the project since its inception has raised USD 936,307.00. All of these transactions have been under Plan Vivo standards, inspections and audits; finances relating to the EU involvement have been independently audited by the University of Edinburgh’s auditors. Under the Envirotrade project model, which is a further development of the Plan Vivo system, a minimum of two-thirds of carbon credit sales revenues are to be returned to the local community in the form of contracted payments to farmers and community activities and payment for in-country services. For Nhambita, due to the developmental nature of the pilot project, all carbon credit sales revenues have been returned to the local community, along with additional funding provided by the EU and one of Envirotrade’s founders. No party, other than the local farmers and other members of the Nhambita community, has received any financial return at all from the Nhambita Community Carbon Project since its inception.

Project reviews

The Nhambita Community Carbon Project has recently undergone two on-site due diligence reviews and an audit by credible third parties who have concluded that the project is not only highly effective in achieving its goals, but also praiseworthy in its approach. The two reviewers were John 0’Niles, an independent carbon expert and Taco Kooistra of Consultants for Development Programmes. We believe that the research conducted by the University of Edinburgh, the technical support rendered by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, the independent reviews conducted by independent academics and the ongoing certification of the transactions by the Plan Vivo Foundation (BR&D) are all of a high standard and underpin an excellent project that is contributing to the transformation of people’s livelihoods in a community that was ravaged by war and experiences significant poverty. The only financial beneficiaries of the sales to-date have been the over 1000 farmers and the community association for whom the money is providing a transformation and our clients are aware of that.

Obligations and responsibilities

Envirotrade has been transparent in its dealings with its clients and encourages them to both familiarise themselves with all the aspects of the project and its development by reading the substantial body of published material on the project and to visit the project to review and audit its activities. We have a contractual obligation to our clients to provide independent certification annually against the Plan Vivo standard for every ton of carbon sold and in the event of this certification not being forthcoming we would be obliged to refund payment. Certification is based on a reporting process and inspections of the project against and recognised third-party standard.

The project team led by the University of Edinburgh have submitted a final report to the EU (at the end of the EU funding cycle) that will contain substantial rebuttals of some of the elements of the ODI desk-review commissioned by the EU that has been cited in recent press article that is based on incomplete or premature information. We believe that it is incorrect to portray the issues raised by the deask review as serious deficiencies before the EU are in possession of all of the reports and materials relating to the project and certainly not as anything more than well intention shortcomings in relation to a new, pilot project in a challenging part of the world. The EU indicated that they were comfortable with this, and are now in receipt of the final report. We have every confidence in the University to provide full answers to any of the issues raised in the ODI desk review. By its very nature, a project like the Nhambita Community Carbon Project that is developing innovative responses to the intricate problems of unsustainable land use practices, livelihoods of marginalised communities and climate change mitigation is characterised by a degree of uncertainty and the possibility of failure. For this reason, all of the assumptions made in the calculations and other projections are of a conservative nature and reflect the inherent risks involved. We believe our clients are all aware of these inherent characteristics. In the event of failure and a refusal to certify, Envirotrade would be legally obliged to refund clients.

You can find various reports on the Carbon Livelihoods projects in our Resources