Blue Carbon is headed by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of the UAE royal family and the chairman of this company.
A Dubai-based firm, Blue Carbon, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Zimbabwean government that will provide them with conservation rights over one-fifth of Zimbabwe’s landmass for carbon credit production. They will receive 7.5 million hectares of the South African country’s forest land under this carbon credit deal.
This agreement between Zimbabwean government and Blue Carbon is the successor to several other similar controversial MoUs with other nations from the African continent. This includes a deal with Liberia to grant access to a million hectares of forestland to a private Emirati company. These contracts are signed before the UN Climate Summit COP 28, which is to be held in Dubai in November with the main agenda of carbon credit.
Blue Carbon is headed by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of the UAE royal family and the chairman of this company. This firm is almost a year old and has no proof of record for its prior experience in handling carbon offset projects.
Blue Carbon has plans to protect the diverse flora ecosystem of the region and use the carbon credits to showcase it on the global forum and sell those in the international markets. It has emerged as one of the world’s largest carbon credit companies.
Al Maktoum signed the MoU with President Emmerson Mnangagwa in Harare and said that this carbon-credit deal signifies a show of strengthened partnership between Zimbabwe and the UAE on the global stage. He also said that the projects involved will bring hundreds of millions of dollars into the Zimbabwean economy. From the sale proceeds, a large chunk will be poured back into community upliftment and improving the livelihood of the local committees.
Mnangagwa said that this deal by Blue Carbon and Zimbabwean government will engage in reforestation and conservation. He is also focused on the earnings generated from this space by the sale of carbon credits in the global market, as it will lead to income for the government as well. He mentioned that this deal would contract the government’s financial deficit by $200 million, besides producing carbon credits for usability in the international market.
Broken Promises and Community Concerns
Zimbabwe happens to be the world’s third-largest carbon credit producer. The Kariba project, a site spanning over 785,000 hectares, is the world’s first large-scale forest protection project. It is handled by South Pole, a Swiss carbon credit trading company and Stephen Wentzel, a Zimbabwean entrepreneur.
These projects have attracted several large corporations like Volkswagen, Gucci, etc and have generated over 100 million euros. These deals had promised over 50% of the profits for the local communities. A survey by Follow the Money discovered that these promises were meant to be broken and untraced.
Tracy Mutowekuzia, an attorney for the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), said that this money does not reach the communities for forest preservation. Instead, the government keeps the money and decides the action for the community as they see it relevant. She also mentioned that the actual figures are still unknown, and it is doubtful whether the land valuation is justified or not.
Activists say that these carbon credit deals do not result in community upliftment. South Pole, the company managing the Kariba project, could not show proof of money made from the sale of carbon credits landed in the hands of the Zimbabwean communities.
Such criticisms pushed the government to cancel all the CO2 credit projects running and planned in the country and demanded a larger portion of the sale proceeds. After some negotiations, they have permitted the companies to keep around 70% of the income and the rest to be allocated to the locals.