Rockefeller convening presentation by NCRC's Dr. Asante

1. CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND
AFRICAN AGRICULTURE GRANTEE CONVENING
24-25 February 2011
Cocoa Carbon Initiative - Ghana
Nature Conservation Research Centre
Dr. Winston Asante
NATURE
CONSERVATION
RESEARCH CENTRE
Conserving the Environment;
Developing Communities.
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2. Brief Background of the Institution
Nature Conservation Research Centre
• Leading NGO in West Africa in PES and carbon space.
• Developing 1st African Centre of Excellence in Applied PES with
12 in-house specialists.
• Facilitating forest and agriculture carbon finance projects in
Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone.
• Considering increasing its reach to provide support to emerging
projects in East Africa.
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3. Other climate change projects
Carbon Map of Ghana
• Collaboration with FC, Oxford, NASA, FT, & research bodies
• Supports Ghana’s national REDD readiness MRV effort
• Produced freely available 100m resolution carbon map
• Relationship between in situ biomass density and remote
sensing characteristics.
Nyankamba REDD+
• Aims to avoid deforestation and degradation plus promote
carbon stock enhancement and conservation through
implementation of community/farmer CREMA
• 240,000 ha of savanna woodland in Ghana’s Northern Region
• Major seasonal wildlife corridor between 2 large national parks
• PIN submitted to BioCF, currently addressing gaps and
moving towards support for PDD.
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4. Objectives of the Rockefeller Foundation Grant
Work with Ghanaian cocoa farmer organizations to:
• Increase their capacity to access carbon finance,
• Create the basic conditions for private investment in activities that
mitigate carbon emissions,
• Enhance farmer livelihoods
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5. Key Activities Related to the Grant
1) Defining the general cocoa carbon strategy and assessing its feasibility.
• Moving forward at Bonsam Bepo site: drivers of deforestation, boundaries, ,
• Defining farm-level activities
• On-going pre-feasibility assessment
2) Engaging with key cocoa sector stakeholders and likely partners to
guage potential roles and modes of partnership.
• CREMA development: 13 community-level committees, moving to Board establishment
• Engagement with farmer associations and licensed buying companies
3) Building capacity and supporting an enabling environment for REDD+
and carbon finance at the national level.
• 3 trainings / capacity building workshops on key technical and policy issues
• Analysis of legal and policy environment for REDD+
• Development of the Carbon Map
• Extensive collaboration with FC- Climate Change Unit
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6. Highlight on the Progress to date
February- launch of the Carbon Map
February- land-use modeling and carbon stock mapping training. Bonsam Bepo site
was main example in this training
January- assessment of REDD+ / Agricultural carbon methodologies for Bonsam
Bepo site
November- exercise to define project boundaries based on traditional boundaries,
district boundaries, cocoa system patterns, and forest boundaries
October- workshop on REDD+ architecture and sub-national options to support
inclusions of projects under national strategy
June- field training on measuring and assessing carbon stocks in forest & agro
ecosystems at Bonsam Bepo site
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7. Early Findings from Key Activities
Legal and Policy Analysis of Tree & Forest Carbon
• Existing legal frame-work prioritizes economic exploitation for
State’s benefit
• Farmers and forest-based communities have few legal,
economic, customary incentives to maintain trees and forests.
• Carbon needs legal & policy definition
• Examples of benefit sharing arrangements provide examples of
how carbon benefits can be managed.
• Before REDD/Agric carbon can be realized need to address poor
forest stewardship and governance, perverse policy incentives,
weak law enforcement, land disputes and conflicts.
Carbon Map of Ghana
• Provide 1st total biomass carbon stock for country.
• Site level preliminary carbon stocking figures for feasibility work
• Extrapolation of the map is currently informing a redefinition of
Ghana’s forest.
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8. Key Challenges
• Assessing carbon stocks and baseline in a complex mosaic
landscape
• Building awareness and understanding of farm-level sampling of
carbon, avoiding misconceptions
• Heightened expectation of carbon credits and benefits
• Need to harmonize land and tree tenure in project area
• Finding multiple farmer organization “partners” who can bring
necessary scale of aggregation to project site
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9. Lessons Learnt
• Need to progress cautiously in-view of
community expectation of carbon credits and
REDD. Failure to deliver can cause significant
problems.
• Need for detailed demonstration of carbon
sampling during community engagement.
• CREMA boundaries demarcated according to
harmonized land tenure arrangements.
• Ground level monitoring of carbon stocks likely
to be critical component of MRV
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10. Emerging Opportunities for Collaboration
• Unprecedented collaboration between the govt FC and NCRC
• Sense of ownership of the C mapping process by State agencies and
ministries.
• Cocoa buying companies and financial institutions seriously seeking
pathway to engage in agriculture and carbon-based finance.
• New climate-focused certification options (SAN Climate Module)
• Emerging technology for carbon stock monitoring (Helveta)
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11. Next steps
• Detailed carbon sampling of cocoa farm dynamics and shade levels
so as to enable distinction between cocoa farms w/shade, w/out
shade, and forests using remote sensing.
• Detailed technical/economic assessment of project activities
• Complete Project Idea Note (PIN)
• Begin development of Project Design Document (PDD)
• On-going CREMA development activities
• Design benefit sharing mechanisms with stakeholders
• Policy Briefs: Institutional arrangements on MRV- challenges,
lessons learned and recommendations from the Carbon Map
experience
• Draft working paper on CREMAs, REDD and benefit sharing
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