Mozambique Carbon Livelihoods Trust

The Quirimbas Carbon Livelihoods Programme (QCLP) is located in the Quirimbas National Park located in the six central districts of the Cabo Delgado Province, Mozambique and encompasses an area of approximately 7506 square kilometres, 5984 on the continent and 1522 being ocean, intertidal, and island habitats. The National Park was recently formed as an initiative of the 40 villages in the Park and the Mozambique government supported by WWF. The park is the largest marine protected area in Africa , the first to be declared in post-independence Mozambique , and significantly, the first park in Africa to be created at the request of local inhabitants. The marine part of the Park includes the 11 southernmost islands of the Quirimba Archipelago, of which four (Ibo, Matemo, Quisiwe, and Quirimba) have a long history of permanent human occupation. A managed 'elephant corridor' will in time connect this part of the park to the Niassa Reserve to the north.

The QCLP is located inside the boundaries of the national park and will target agricultural communities in the Macomia, Quissanga and Meluca districts of the National Park. Some 95 000 people currently reside in the park and 30 000 in the buffer zone. The large population in the park poses significant challenges to the management of resources and poverty and environmental degradation threaten this unique habitat. Forest management and conservation of soils and river catchment areas is essential to ensure the survival of fragile marine environments including the corral reefs in the national park. The QCLP is working with the park authorities and selected communities in vulnerable and threatened areas of the park is to develop forestry and land use practices that promote sustainable rural livelihoods in a way that raises living standards through the generation and sale of verifiable carbon emission reductions. The project has three main components: the promotion of sustainable land use through agroforestry, forest and fire management and effective use of non-timber forest products to generate co-benefits for the communities participating. Animal/human conflict is a significant problem in the park and impacts on livelihoods, the project will address this problem and bring much needed resources from carbon revenues to assist in this. The project will also work closely with the management of the QNP and WWF to conserve bio-diversity and implement the park management plans.

The project will generate verifiable carbon emission reductions using the Plan Vivo methodology and Envirotrade will market the offsets to buyers who wish to invest in poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation in Mozambique . Project activities are aimed at developing sustainable land use practices with the targeted communities to provide socio-economic benefits (transform livelihoods) and protect and restore forest resources in the national park. This will involve the restoration of degraded areas in the park that were previously cultivated and are now abandoned or areas that have been illegally logged, an extensive agroforestry programme to stabilise shifting agriculture and assist farmers, the production and marketing of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and sustainable community timber utilisation in designated areas.