Sustainable cocoa-forest practices yield carbon credits

local areas helps us define land use dynamics and accurately map the extent of Ghana’s forests and associated land use change,” explains Ms. Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, Director-Climate Change of the Forestry Commission.

Ghana is also working with the World Bank’s PROGREEN to bring 210,000 hectares of cocoa forest landscape within Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs), an approach that empowers local communities to drive change and shape their nature-resilient futures. This support is specifically aimed at benefitting farmers – 2,855 of whom to date have adopted more sustainable farming practices – and forms part of the World Bank’s sustainable landscape management approach that connects naturebased investments from land to sea.

REDD+ Carbon Credits Yield Payment The collective effort is paying off. In January 2023, Ghana became the second country in Africa after Mozambique to receive payments from the FCPF for reducing emissions through REDD+. FCPF paid Ghana US$4.8million for reducing some 972,000 tonnes of carbon emissions during the first monitoring period (June to December 2019) of their emissions reduction payment agreement (ERPA). It specifies that the FCPF will pay up to US$50million for 10 million tonnes of carbon emissions that Ghana reduces through 2024.

The bulk of these payments (69%) will go to farmer groups and local communities like Akyaa’s that are achieving results. These communities have created shaded cocoa systems and are ultimately responsible for halting the expansion of cocoa and food crop farms into forest reserves. They have also helped to reduce illegal logging, illegal mining, and wildfires.

FCPF paid Ghana US$4.8million for reducing some 972,000 tonnes of carbon emissions during the first monitoring period (June to December 2019) of their emissions reduction payment agreement (ERPA).

A benefit-sharing plan ensures farmers and other stakeholders are fairly recognised and rewarded for their crucial role in reducing emissions. An additional programme supported by the World Bank’s new EnABLE trust fund is further promoting social inclusion of marginalised communities and disadvantaged groups such as women, youth and people with disabilities.

Today, Ghana is establishing a track-record of generating and transacting REDD+ carbon credits at the jurisdictional level. If the country continues to generate high-quality emission reductions at its current rate, up to 10 million additional emission reductions could be available for sale through carbon markets. The FCPF programme supports Ghana to build credibility and experience to transact through carbon markets and gain access to other sources of climate finance.

“Ghana’s rigorous REDD+ process signals to carbon markets that the country is producing high-integrity, high-quality carbon credits,” says Andres Espejo, FCPF Fund Manager. “As Ghana and countries with similar programmes begin to monetise emission reductions through carbon markets, these multiple income streams and finance will benefit the farming communities at the forefront of forest conservation work.”

The Forestry Commission of Ghana is partnering with the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, Ghana Forest Investment Programme, Global Environment Facility, PROGREEN, REDD+ and the World Bank to support climate and forest-smart development in Ghana. The World Bank is drawing on this experience as it rolls out its new Scaling Climate Action by Lowering Emissions (SCALE) trust fund to deploy results-based payments in support of just and inclusive decarbonisation across a broad range of sectors.