LACK of knowledge is hampering the uptake of carbon credit projects despite Zimbabwe having enough capacity to develop and finance them, an expert has said.

Carbon credits are permits that allow the owner to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases.

One credit allows the emission of one tonne of carbon dioxide or the equivalent of other greenhouse gases.

As the effects of climate change take centre stage, Zimbabwe last year introduced Statutory Instrument 150 of 2023 — Carbon Credits Trading (General) Regulations — to provide guidelines on generating and trading these instruments locally.

However, participation in the carbon credits market has remained low due to lack of understanding, among other issues.

Onyx Earth Biogas co-director (carbon credits) Kuda Manyanga last week revealed that carbon credit trading was a low-hanging fruit for Zimbabwe despite misconceptions.

“I think we have enough capacity in the country to develop carbon projects and finance them as well. Why I say that? If we talk of biogas, we are already doing biogas digesters. Like ourselves, we have done over 400 biogas digesters now,” he said.

“Some are in operation, some are actually under construction. So if a client has paid us for construction of a biogas digester, they are doing it for carbon credits. But what is needed is extra money to register it in the process and generate carbon revenue.

“And then the key challenge that we are facing is lack of knowledge. People just don’t know about carbon markets. At the policy level, there is limited information, as well as at a technical level in most cases.”

Manyanga added: “Two weeks ago, we were training all rural district authorities on carbon markets, where most indicated that they knew nothing about this issue and need training.”

Manyanga was speaking at the Waste to Energy conference organised by The Standard in Kariba last week.

The Standard is a weekly published by Alpha Media Holdings, along with another weekly Zimbabwe Independent and the daily NewsDay, as well as operating an online telecast station HStv.

Manyanga said there was need for training for Zimbabweans to know more about carbon credits.

He added that communities can develop carbon projects on their own and negotiate with financiers to get more credits rather than just maybe 10% or 20%.

Manyanga said the challenge with the existing policy was that government wants 30% of all carbon revenue to go to Treasury.

“But if they identify their own carbon assets prior to an investor coming to them, it is easy for them to negotiate from scratch because they know the value of what they have and that’s what we are trying as consultants to say, ‘can we do an evaluation of your city, evaluation of your local authority on how to identify carbon assets and be able to develop them on their own’,” he said

Manyanga bemoaned the fact that African countries were being out-muscled financially and politically, for example, on the issue of coal.

While most countries, for example Zimbabwe, still rely on coal for electricity and as a source of revenue, a global agreement was signed to ban coal.

“The discussions around coal is that all developing countries refused to take responsibility around the issues of global greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, our historical contribution is less than 1% in terms of emissions,” Manyanga said.

“But what happens during climate change negotiations is sometimes we are out-muscled financially, politically and there is a lot of bullying around these discussions, where we end up signing some of these agreements.

“What we tried to do as developing countries is to say, ‘okay, you don’t want us to develop using our coal, because that’s what is available and we have it as an abundant resource. You developed using coal, so we are going to continue business as usual’. But for us to meet our Nationally Determined Contributions [NDCs], [like Zimbabwe’s NDCs may require around US$100 billion], you give us the money to develop in a cleaner way and then we meet our NDCs. That’s the agreement. These guys are saying, ‘fine, we’ll give you the money, but not direct.”