The South Pole Group published this week the Carbon Neutral Certificate for World Resources Forum 2015, held in Davos in October last year. The document certifies that the almost 700 tons of emissions were offset to the Kariba Avoided Deforestation Project in Zimbabwe.
The project aims at reducing deforestation and forest degradation through a range of activities proposed by local communities and financed by project supporters. These include the establishment of nutritional gardens, conservation agriculture, honey production, forest fire prevention and enhanced wildlife conservation. Besides reducing the amount of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, carbon offsetting can also deliver added benefits at the project site, such as employment opportunities, community development programmes and training and education for local stakeholders. This project aims at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities for poor communities in this region of Northern Zimbabwe, an area now suffering heavily from deforestation, poverty, and drought. In order to ensure the quality and integrity of carbon offsets, a reliable program of standards, verification processes and registries have been put in place.
