Saving African Forests, One Tree at a Time

Carbon offsets to preserve African forest
ERA Carbon Offsets is trading carbon credits aimed at preserving land previously slated for logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo

A Vancouver carbon-trading firm has completed its first sale of carbon-offset credits from the environmentally sensitive Congo basin.

Vancouver-based ERA Carbon Offsets Ltd. has completed the first sale of offsets from its Mai Ndombe project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company has sold 300,000 offsets to Forest Carbon Group AG of Frankfurt, Germany, the first of 1.1 million offsets to be delivered through the end of 2014.

The company confirms that the value of the recent delivery of offsets is in the millions of dollars, but the exact amount remains confidential. The Mai Ndombe REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) project involves credits representing the value of the region’s forest remaining intact. The value of the offsets has been validated and verified by Det Norske Veritas, a Norway-based conservation foundation.

The project encompasses approximately 300,000 hectares of forest, swamp and savannah in the Congo Basin, about 400 km northeast of Kinshashe. The area previously comprised two logging concessions; following ERA’s application to manage the concessions for conservation, the DRC assigned two Forest Conservation Concession contracts to the company in August 2011.

The Mai Ndombe project is expected to produce a total of approximately 175 million offsets over its 30 year project life. “We are very excited to reach another significant and important milestone in the development of the Mai Ndombe REDD+ project,” says ERA CEO James Tansey. “Following its validation and verification this past December, we are pleased to see early support from the marketplace.”