Analysing the Eastern Africa Carbon Market Portfolio

• Workshop for Climate Innovation Series
• 27 May 2021, 9.30AM EDT / 1.30PM GMT / 3.30PM CET / 4.30PM EAT
• Recording of the session

Summary
The webinar presented the recently released carbon market profiles of the Eastern Africa Alliance on Carbon Markets and Climate Finance. The Alliance member countries (Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda) have successfully registered a total of 465 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) activities, being over 50 Project Activities (PAs) and 50 plus Programmes of Activtities (PoAs) containing over 400 individual Component Project Activities (CPAs). Activtities that have issued over 13 million CERs as of December 2020.
In addition, the vast majority of the counties in the region have registered Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) activities that contribute significantly to Emission Reductions (ER). There are over 200 registered activities, under the Gold Standard, VERRA and Plan Vivo, that have issued over 37 million credits (as of December 2020).
All registered CDM and VCM activities in the Eastern African region have been summarized in the reports published on the Alliance’ website https://easternafricaalliance.org/. These publications further highlight that the region is experiencing important recent interest in innovative mitigation actions (e.g. off-grid electricity, electric mobility, energy access and solar water pumping) engagement under the various carbon standards.
In light of the ongoing CDM transition and uncertainty around the future of carbon markets, the webinar discussed: What will happen with these CDM activities and what lies ahead for Eastern Africa carbon assets? The discussants suggest that it is important to a) promote a dynamic tracking environment to keep record of CDM activities in the region, b) establish data sharing practices between the host governments and standards, and c) build further on the experiences with the CDM and VCM. The webinar further suggests how to address the uncertainty around Article 6 of the Paris Agreement in the region: 1) Protect the vulnerable CDM projects that are at risk of discontinuation, with carbon finance considered as an important element to ensure their continuation, 2) Build global literacy and capacity in the use of VCM 3) Be more intentional about the channelling of carbon finance (i.e. identify the sectors and activity types to be driven by this funding course)and 4) It is important to have institutional frameworks in place.

Tim Cowman
Carbon Africa