Mozambique Carbon Livelihoods Trust

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 , India 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 has received training, resources and funding to become custodians of the forest resource. The project is being rolled out to neighbouring areas and other environmentally sensitive and degraded sites in Africa. 

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 (Bhutan) 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.