Isra-Mart srl: The Carbon Project in Uganda

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I n the peak afternoon sun, a pickup truck rumbles through the dirt track flanked on either side by rolling hills of neatly lined pine trees as far as the eye can see. At a clearing in the middle of the pine forest, the truck comes to a halt, raising a cloud of dust. It is the only irritant to the fresh smell of pine. This isn’t a temperate coniferous forest in North America. It’s the heart of equatorial Africa, Uganda. And these alien, fast-growing, Caribbean pines are gaining popularity as the solution to reforest degraded land.

“We have reached the carbon project area,” says Lemmy Kasimbazi, forest supervisor, National Forestry Authority (NFA), as he gets out of the truck. A nondescript signboard hanging on a shrub reads, “RECPA Carbon Project Area — funded by World Bank”.

NFA is the Ugandan government body partnering with World Bank to establish the Nile Basin Reforestation project — 2,015 hectares of pine forests — that will earn carbon credits under United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). RECPA, or Rwoho Environmental Conservation and Protection Association, is the local community group that will manage 17 percent of the project area as part of a collaborative forest management plan.

This World Bank initiative aims to provide a new financing mechanism to help countries like Uganda restore degraded forests, allowing local communities to benefit from the CDM. The basic idea is that trees trap carbon dioxide and hence planting more trees is an effective offset against carbon emissions. One tree in a tropical forest could potentially trap one tonne of “carbon dioxide equivalent” over a lifetime of 50 years.

If the Uganda experiment succeeds, it could hold valuable lessons for developing countries like India.
Of the 10 carbon forestry projects approved ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, three are in India. None of the Indian projects is World Bank funded, but the bank is actively looking at India. And it is using its existing pilots as critical groundwork to replicate them in other countries.

A Patient Game
The Nile Basin Reforestation project is divided into five sectors, of which Project No. 3 in Rwoho Central Forest Reserve, 320 km southwest of the capital Kampala, is the first in Africa to be approved for trading on the CDM market.

A lot hangs in the balance. Trees can’t store carbon dioxide forever. They could be cut down in which case the carbon credit would be lost. Under CDM rules, such credits would need to be replaced with credits from other types of clean energy projects — which a poor country like Uganda may not be able to. Keeping the new forests going despite the economic demands of the community and natural disasters will be a challenge.

Also, the minimum timeframe for these projects is 20 years. The credits have to be sold to developed nations with the World Bank acting as a conduit. Credits developed from forests get a lower price than the ones developed through other means. It remains to be seen how successful this plan will be in getting the community its rewards.
mg_29322_traditional_forest_users_280×210.jpgIn the centre of a small village in Rwoho, people crowd into a tiny yellow room whose walls are covered with photographs, handwritten charts, and a vision statement that reads “Towards a sustainable healthy, and environmental healthy community.” The room, overlooking the plantations, is the headquarters of RECPA, a voluntary environmental organisation formed in 2003. Jerome Byesigwa, chairman of RECPA proudly introduces the project: “You must have planted trees in your land to be a member,” he announces to his guests.

Its mission — plant trees — reflects the community’s concern over the depletion of a resource its members are heavily dependent on. Till the World Bank project came along, the group had been planting trees on their own land.

RECPA has 270 members and the annual subscription is 5,000 Uganda shillings ($2.2) with a one-time initial fee of about 10,000 shillings ($4.4). This money is used for maintaining the plantation; NFA provides free seedlings and land and the group members manage all operations on the 60 hectares they have planted so far. (The World Bank has given NFA an initial grant of $300,000 to upgrade technology.) Those members who choose to be part of the carbon project pay an additional 100,000 shillings for a share, and can own six such shares. These shares also entitle them to carbon credits under the project. The earnings from the credits are yet to come and the projections are modest. They are expected to get about $65 a year per hectare from permissible forest activities and carbon credits combined.