Africa Carbon Markets Initiative: “A disincentive to progress in cutting down on emissions”

ACMI will help corporations to greenwash their pollution. It will not help address the climate crisis

Launched in November 2022, during COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) aims to generate 300 million voluntary carbon credits per year by 2030, and 1.5 billion credits per year by 2050. It hopes to earn US$6 billion by 2030, and more than US$120 billion by 2050.

The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative is nothing if not ambitious. In 2022, 279 million carbon credits were issued on the voluntary carbon markets globally. ACMI is hoping to issue more than that only from Africa by 2030.

It would be a disaster for the climate. In a statement released in November 2022, Kwami Kpondzo of Friends of the Earth Togo said that,

“It would seem African leaders are determined not to learn from their mistakes of the past. For a fictional initiative that keeps Africa locked in the fossil fuels trap to be conceived of at a time that Africa is in the grip of climate crisis is totally inconceivable and unacceptable.”

The ACMI is being promoted as a way to boost African economies, fight climate change, create jobs, protect ecosystems, and expand energy access.

Damilola Ogunbiyi is the UN Secretary-General’s special representative for Sustainable Energy for All, one of the organisations behind the ACMI. In a January 2023 press release she said that,

“The African carbon market Initiative will be a transformational opportunity for Africa, with the potential to unlock billions in climate finance to support economies while expanding energy access, creating jobs, safeguarding biodiversity, and driving climate action towards our joint Paris goals.”

The reality is that carbon trading will make the climate crisis worse, because even if the carbon credits generated represent one tonne of carbon that did not enter the atmosphere (and that’s a very big if!), for every carbon credit generated there is a buyer who will use the credit to continue polluting.

In addition to being a dangerous distraction from the need to leave fossil fuels in the ground, the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative is a distraction from the Global North’s failure to meet it climate finance obligations to the Global South.

Here’s Ogunbiyi again, pretty much admitting the last point:

“The current scale of financing available for Africa’s energy transition is nowhere close to what is required. Achieving the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative targets will provide much-needed financing that will be transformative for the continent.”

The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative was launched by The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, Sustainable Energy for All, and the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Let’s take a quick look at each of these organisations in turn.

The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet

The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) describes itself as “an alliance of philanthropy, local entrepreneurs, governments, and technology, policy, and financing partners”.

On its website, GEAPP explains that,

Our common mission is to support developing countries’ shift to a clean energy, pro-growth model that ensures universal energy access, unlocking a new era of inclusive economic growth, while enabling the global community to meet critical climate goals during the next decade.

GEAPP was launched at COP26 in Glasgow with a commitment of US$1.5 billion from IKEA Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bezos Earth Fund. Eight investment partners promised nearly US$9 billion (the African Development Bank Group, the Asian Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the British International Investment, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and the World Bank).

In addition, GEAPP has seven “upstream partners”: The COP26 Energy Transition Council, Sustainable Energy for All, International Solar Alliance, USAID, Power Africa, RMI, and the International Renewable Energy Agency.

GEAPP has a Global Leadership Council chaired by Jonas Støre, Norway’s prime minister, and Rajiv Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. Other members of the Council include Achim Steiner (Administrator of the UN Development Programme), Andrew Steer (President and CEO of the Bezos Earth Fund), Børge Brende (President of the World Economic Forum), Damilola Ogunbiyi (Sustainable Energy for All), David Malpass (President of the World Bank), Jonathan Berman (CEO of the Shell Foundation), and Werner Hoyer (President of the European Investment Bank).

Sustainable Energy for All

Sustainable Energy for All was launched in 2010 by the UN Secretary General. It describes itself as follows:

Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) is an international organization that works in partnership with the United Nations and leaders in government, the private sector, financial institutions, civil society and philanthropies to drive faster action towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) – access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030 – in line with the Paris Agreement on climate.

Damilola Ogunbiyi is the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All. The organisation is funded by the Austrian Development Agency, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, The Rockefeller Foundation, Shell Foundation, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and Wallace Global Fund.

The chair of SEforALL’s Governance Board is Francesco Starace, CEO of Italy’s Enel S.p.A., the second largest power company in the world by revenue.

Apart from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative, SEforALL promotes manufacture of renewable energy in country, energy transition and investment plans, grants for clean energy projects, and voluntary commitments to SDG7.

UN Economic Commission for Africa

Established in 1958 by the UN Economic Social Council, the UN Economic Commission for Africa promotes economic cooperation among African countries. ECA’s Acting Executive Secretary is Antonio Pedro, a mineral exploration geologist.

Pedro initiated the Africa Mining Vision adopted by the African Union in 2009. As Nnimmo Bassey, director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria, points out in a critique of the Africa Mining Vision, the words “pollution”, “contamination”, “rehabilitation”, and “liability” are “currently and disturbingly missing in the AMV”.

The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative

Needless to say, the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative includes Nature-based solutions and REDD in its proposed carbon credit projects. An ACMI Roadmap Report published at the launch in November 2022, ACMI anticipates advocating for “philanthropies and NGOs to continue supporting high quality carbon credit projects with significant biodiversity and community focus”.

The Roadmap Report includes this table of the actors currently involved in nature-based solutions in Africa:

The table reveals some of the Big Polluters attempting to greenwash their operations with African carbon credits include: Delta Air Lines, Gucci, Volkswagen, Netflix, Škoda, BHP, and Nespresso.

WeAct should probably be included in the list of brokers. Polluting companies buying carbon credits from WeAct include BP, Statkraft, RWE, and Vitol.

The Africa Carbon Markets Initiative has a 13-member steering committee that includes (among others): Annette Nazareth of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market; Samuel Thevasagayam of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; David Antonioli of Verra; M. Sanjayan of Conservation International; Ariel Perez of Vertree; and Damilola Ogunbiyi of Sustainable Energy for All.

The press release about the launch of the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative mentions the creation of another partnership: the Nature Framework Development Group. This aims “to develop a market leading nature/biodiversity credit”.

The partnership includes Conservation International, Verra, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Conservation Finance Alliance, The Biodiversity Consultancy, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, and Blue Nature Alliance with support from McKinsey & Company.

Promoting carbon markets is business as usual for these organisations.

But activists in Africa rejected the Africa Climate Markets Initiative. In the statement released in November 2022, Nnimmo Bassey said that,

“This initiative is a disincentive to progress in cutting down on emissions. Carbon trade is simply business at the expense of the planet. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry backed by Global North governments have found willing partners in African leaders who have shockingly decided to close their ears to the cries of their people carrying the biggest burdens of the climate crisis.”

And Ndivile Mokohena of Gender CC, South Africa said that,

“As African leaders drift in every wrong direction at the whim of the fossil fuel industry and their enablers, people on the continent continue to suffer. Leaving the fossils in the ground is the faultless path that the world continues to ignore. This carbon market initiative is disappointing.”

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