Carbon Tanzania Offsets
Carbon Tanzania focuses on developing and selling offsets that fulfill the following core criteria:
- Designed according to the highest scientific standards for determining carbon storage and sequestration and for determining additionality and controlling for leakage;
- Provide direct and indirect benefits to local forest-dependent communities;
- Create long-term incentives for conserving biodiversity and ecosystems through indigenous forests and plant communities.
To effectively produce and sell carbon offsets that fulfill the above criteria, Carbon Tanzania has developed three basic models for project development, partnerships and brokerage opportunities. In all cases, Carbon Tanzania maintains the highest possible standards in seeking quality carbon offsets.
Direct Project Development
The direct development model involves Carbon Tanzania working with local communal (villages) or individual landholders to establish offset-generating projects. In these instances Carbon Tanzania is responsible for facilitating all stages of project development, from carrying out local informational meetings and training sessions, to preparing project baseline scenarios and carbon monitoring protocols. Carbon Tanzania aims to promote community-based forest management, whereby villages collectively manage forests to produce carbon offsets and other locally valued ecosystem services.
Carbon Tanzania will also work to develop smaller-scale offset production models, working with individual landholders or groups of landholders in more densely settled areas to generate offsets through planting of indigenous trees or conservation of small forest patches.
Partner Collaborations
Carbon Tanzania seeks high-calibre, locally-based partner organizations or projects that are interested in developing forestry-based offsets. We partner with organizations that have strong, long-term track records of working at the village level on community-based enterprises and natural resource management, and of being able to develop innovative projects which produce strong local benefits.
Carbon Tanzania has partnered with Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT), recognized as one of the best community-based natural resource management organizations in Tanzania, to facilitate participatory planning and implementation of the Mongo Wa Mono and Domanga avoided deforestation offset project. UCRT has been working in Mongo Wa Mono for 9 years and has established itself as a transparent partner with the community while successfully pursuing its mission of supporting community rights and ownership to ensure the viable and long-term conservation of human and biological diversity. To learn more, see the project update.
Carbon Tanzania is currently partnering with the Mpingo Conservation Development Initiative (MCDI), one of Tanzania’s leading community-based forestry NGO’s, on a pilot initiative in Kilwa District, where MCDI has been based since its establishment in 2004. The project will aim to extend MCDI’s work, which facilitates villages to establish sustainable forest management plans based around harvesting high-value hardwoods such as Mpingo (Dalbergia melanoxylon), in extensive Village Land Forest Reserves. All of these offsets will be certified and validated through the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance standards and the Voluntary Carbon Standards, and will thus be premium offsets in terms of their social and environmental co-benefits. To learn more, see the project update.
Brokerage
Carbon Tanzania wants to help connect local producers of offsets generated from forest conservation and management projects as well as other offset generation projects to global markets. We only select and broker offsets that are real, additional and validated using the highest of standards. To learn more, visit the carbon feasibility study page.
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