Debunking Carbon Tanzania’s claims about the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project

Carbon Tanzania’s own documents undermine the company’s statements.

In December 2024, REDD-Monitor wrote about the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project in Tanzania. The post was based on an article in the Dutch daily newspaper, Trouw.

On 30 December 2024, REDD-Monitor received an email from Jo Anderson, co-founder of Carbon Tanzania, the UK company behind the Yaeda-Eyasi REDD project. Anderson wrote that,

Unfortunately there are some factual errors in the original Trouw reporting which we are addressing through a legal process with Trouw, so I would ask that you kindly take the article down until the corrected Trouw piece is available.

I posted Anderson’s email on REDD-Monitor and (obviously) did not remove the original post on REDD-Monitor.

On 9 January 2025, Anderson wrote again. Here’s his email in full:

From: Jo Anderson
Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2025
Subject: Details of errors / mistakes in Trouw article referenced in REDD Monitor post
To: REDD-Monitor
Cc: Marc Baker

Hi Chris,

On Monday this week we saw your Dec 31st 2024 post sharing my email. You note that I did not point out any factual errors in your post.Therefore I would like to share the most obvious errors in the Trouw article for your reference so that you have a better insight into where the main misrepresentations and misinformation can be found in their reporting. I hope this underscores why we are taking this seriously and I can only ask again that you take down the related post until a corrected version of the original article is published by Trouw.

If you still do not wish to take down the legally disputed Trouw article, I would ask that you correct the following factual inaccuracies and specific errors in your post (which partly overlap with the issues we are raising with Trouw):

1. Sequencing of land-rights process and REDD Project implementation: During our extended interviews and information exchanges with the Trouw reporters, we attempted to lay out the facts of how land-rights (in the form of community Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy, CCROs) were obtained for the Hadza communities of the Yaeda Valley with the support of both UCRT and the Dorobo Fund in the period between 2001 and 2011. In your article you repeat the Trouw statement that “In October 2011, UCRT helped to secure land rights for the Hadzabe over part of their traditional territory.” The Trouw reporters used this to imply that because the introductory meeting about the proposed carbon project was held in 2010 with the Hadza communities, this indicates that the project preceded the issuing of land rights and in some way that the issuance of the land certificates was dependent on the communities signing up to the carbon project. This is not factually correct since the land certificates had been issued before we held the meeting in 2010, but the formal printing and delivery of the certificates was done in 2011 during a Presidential visit which included the ceremonial “granting” of the certificates. This request has already been filed with Trouw through our lawyers so please correct this information in your post.

2. Simon Counsell’s opinion on claimed emission reductions from the project: Simon has commented several times in the past about both this and other carbon projects based in community lands. His expertise and opinions in indigenous rights and social justice are without question. His ability to understand the science behind the estimation of emission reductions achieved as a result of clearly documented, monitored and verified activities to prevent deforestation in any one specific area is not. Please remove this unqualified opinion, unless Simon can provide his independent analysis, deforestation model and associated calculations of how many tonnes of CO2 he has estimated have been prevented from entering the atmosphere as a result of the Yaeda Eyasi Landscape REDD Project activities.

3. The employment of game scouts working in the project area: It is incorrect to state that Carbon Tanzania employs game scouts to do forest monitoring, protection and by-law enforcement work in the project area ("Carbon Tanzania hires village game scouts who monitor the area and report to local authorities and UCRT if forest is being cut down") . The Village Game Scouts are employed by individual village government councils according to the areas of forest within each of those villages. It is also incorrect to state that these village game scouts report to UCRT. They only report to their village governments and where necessary the District government and related authorities (the Police etc..)

4. Public availability of Carbon Tanzania credit prices: Carbon Tanzania credits are retailed on our website with complete public visibility. Please remove mention of Carbon Tanzania in your statement that "Neither Carbon Tanzania nor MyClimate make their prices public”.

While not a factual error, the statement by the reporters, based on a comment by an anonymous “local NGO worker”, that “very few Hadzabe understand the carbon project” leading you to conclude that “The Trouw article revealed that many of the Hadzabe did not fully understand the carbon trading project and could not have made an informed decision about the project before it started.” is misleading. It is not possible to know how many Hadzabe “understand the project:” based on the opinion of one single person. I suggest that you amend the entire paragraph to read “based on the opinion of a single worker at a local NGO, some Hadzabe may not fully understand the project”.

Many thanks as always for your attention to accuracy and facts.

Yours, Jo Anderson.

Let’s look at each of these points in turn:

1. The land deeds were issued in October 2011

In the 2016 Project Design Document (PDD), Carbon Tanzania writes,

October 2011, the Hadzabe communities of Domanga and Mongo Wa Mono were issued a Community Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO) (a title for the lands on which this project is based, see Annex 6), giving the communities ownership of the land.

Annex 6 of the 2016 PDD includes copies of the land deeds for Domanga and Mongo Wa Mono. Both are dated 17 October 2011:

On its website, The Nature Conservancy states that,

In October 2011, the Hadza took the innovative step of asserting legal claim to their homeland with a CCRO. They received official title — recognized by the government of Tanzania — to 57,000 acres.

At the time, The Nature Conservancy was working with Carbon Tanzania and Ujamaa Community Resource Team (UCRT) to establish land rights for the Hadzabe and to establish the carbon project. Carbon Tanzania’s 2016 PDD states,

The project is grateful for the in-kind support received from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Brandeis University. TNC provided analysis of satellite imagery for the purpose of establishing the historical deforestation rate and assisted with mapping activities.

In a brochure explaining how UCRT works with communities in Tanzania to establish land rights, UCRT writes that,

[S]tarting in 2011, the Ujaama Community Resource Team (UCRT) worked with local communities, district officials and the Ministry of Lands to pilot a different, and stronger, mechanism to secure communal land rights: a group Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy (CCRO).

And later in the same brochure, UCRT writes that,

Until 2011, when UCRT began their pilot work with the government and local communities, CCROs had not been issued to groups of people to formalize their rights to communally held and managed land, even though the law recognised communal CCROs under the village land act No 5 of 1999.

In February 2021, under the headline, “Reflecting on 10 years of Carbon Tanzania” Carbon Tanzania published a conversation between Jo Anderson and Marc Baker, the co-founders of Carbon Tanzania. Anderson asked Baker, “if there was a specific event that marked the beginning of the Yaeda Valley Project on the ground?”

Here’s Baker’s reply:

“I remember talking to Dismas Partalala and Richard Baalow of UCRT in 2010 about how our imagined REDD project might work – to their credit they did not dismiss me as a complete madman! They helped to facilitate conversations with the two original Yaeda Villages (Domanga and Mongo wa Mono), and we told the communities that once the CCRO had been officially signed off we would be able to begin a project. We explained that the project was about carbon and about their trees, and that if they protect these trees, we will be able to deliver revenues for those trees.

“So it was that a decade ago, in early 2011 the CCRO was finalised with the support of our landscape partners, UCRT, The Nature Conservancy and Dorobo Fund, and we were able to officially begin the project.”

Perhaps the CCRO was “finalised” in early 2011 as Baker says. However, it was not actually issued until October 2011.

Baker mentioned Richard Baalow of UCRT. Baalow appears to have played a key role in establishing the project.

The 2016 PDD states that,

This REDD+ project was first introduced in October 2010 and, as is customary, required a two-day meeting with a quorum of the Hadzabe community (270 people). The project coordinator explained the concepts and benefits of the project to the community (in Swahili which was then translated into Hadzane). At all stages of project development the project’s aims have been directly communicated to the Hadzabe community through informal training practices and through Richard Baalow, a community spokesmen who represents the Hadzabe community, as well as being the Secretary of the Yaeda Ward Development Committee.

The 2012 Plan Vivo Validation Report for the Yaeda Valley REDD project lists Baalow as “UCRT community coordinator for Yaeda Valley, ward development officer, and Hadzabe community member in Mbulu town”.

Baalow’s signature appears as a resident and community representative on the land deeds for Mongo Wa Mono, which is in Mbulu district:

In 2015, Ecosystem Marketplace wrote about the Yaeda Valley REDD project. For the article, Ecosystem Marketplace’s Allie Goldstein spoke to Richard Baalow, Marc Baker of Carbon Tanzania, and Matt Brown, The Nature Conservancy’s Africa Director for the article. Goldstein wrote that,

Baalow began working alongside legal advisor Edward Lakita at the Ujaama Community Resource Team on a different solution.

They decided to try a legal instrument called the Certificate of Customary Rights of Occupancy (CCRO) that had previously been used in Tanzania to formalize land rights for individuals. The Nature Conservancy (TNC), another partner in the project, paid for lawyers and meetings. It took years, but the Hadza eventually convinced the Tanzanian government to issue a CCRO to an entire community. In 2011, the Ministry of Lands issued the first-ever group CCRO, and the Hadza’s ownership of 20,000 hectares was finally on the books.

Carbon Tanzania had started selling carbon credits before the October 2010 meeting with the Hadzabe. In a letter (which is included in the 2016 PDD) to Mbulu District Council dated 24 August 2010, UCRT stated that “UCRT is collaborating with Carbon Tanzania to continue its work in Mongo wa Mono through payments from carbon forestry.”

Carbon Tanzania’s 2012 PDD states that “The project coordinator began to sell ex-ante carbon credits in 2007, prior to certification, for the purpose of raising start-up capital for project development.”

Ex-ante carbon credits represent emissions reductions that will take place in the future. A better description in this case would be forward selling of carbon credits from a project that does not yet exist.

This “Database used for internal tracing of ex-ante carbon credits sales” from the 2012 PDD lists the companies involved:

• On 14 May 2009, an adventure tourism company called Summits Africa Ltd. posted the following on the Adventure Travel Trade Association’s website: “Summits Africa also actively supports positive environmentally sensitive projects. We belong to LEAVE NO TRACE and now offer our clients Carbon Neutral climbs by buying Carbon credits from Carbon Tanzania for all of our guests’ trips.”

• On 30 November 2009, Tanzania Daily News reported that the Arusha-based airline Regional Air “has started offsetting some of the company’s carbon footprint with Carbon Tanzania”.

• On 30 August 2015, on its website Carbon Tanzania wrote that, “It was not long after the inception of Carbon Tanzania that The Map’s Edge realised that buying carbon credits could take their environmental efforts a step further. In 2010, after reducing their carbon emissions, they began to buy credits to compensate for all of the unvoidable emissions generated from their safari operations and continue to do so to this day. ‘Carbon Tanzania gave us an easier and more justifiable avenue to compensate for our carbon footprint.’”

• On 25 January 2009, Carbon Tanzania sent an “Invoice for Carbon Offset” to Sanjan Ltd for US$965.00 for the carbon credits that Sanjan had bought in 2008. We know this from a Carbon Tanzania presentation:

Note that these companies are making claims about being “carbon neutral” or “offsetting” their emissions based on carbon credits from a project that did exist at the time they were making these claims.

In its invoice to Sanjan, Carbon Tanzania states that “You have offset 96.5 tonnes of Carbon Dioxide produced by your companies activities.” That is not true, for the simple reason that in January 2009, the carbon project did not exist.

So Carbon Tanzania was selling carbon credits well before the Hadza’s land certificates had been issued. And well before Carbon Tanzania held its October 2010 meeting with Hadza communities to tell them about the carbon project.

2. The counterfactual baseline

In its 2016 PDD, Carbon Tanzania explains that for any carbon project several factors are critical. One of these is that the

forests or woodlands should be under some level of threat, such that local conservation measures would serve to increase the amount of carbon stored than would otherwise occur in the absence of the project (this is known as the ‘additionality’ principle and is a fundamental element of carbon markets). Such increases may occur through forest recovery (improved forest management) or through ‘avoided deforestation’, using a credible baseline scenario which demonstrates that in the absence of carbon market funds, existing vegetation will be cleared and carbon lost.

Counterfactual baselines are based on a story about would have happened in the absence of the project. These baselines cannot be verified because the project did go ahead.

Obviously, it is in the project developer’s interest to exaggerate the threat to the forest, because this generates more carbon credits, and therefore more money.

As Larry Lohmann argues, the problem is not “bad baselines” but the concept of counterfactual baselines itself. “That reality does more than invalidate any particular REDD project,” Lohmann writes. “It invalidates REDD (and all other offsets) as a whole.”

In the case of the Yaeda REDD project, Carbon Tanzania explains in the 2016 PDD that,

The baseline or without project scenario, was established from the historical deforestation rate determined through analysis of ground-truthed Landsat data, with technical assistance from The Nature Conservancy. . . .

Carbon Tanzania explains that recent deforestation in the project area is “contrary to the village by-laws, the village land use plan and national laws governing land acquisition and utilization within Tanzania”.

Here’s a map (from the 2016 PDD) of the project area, the leakage belt, and the reference region:

And here’s a series of maps showing conversion to agriculture from 2000 to 2010:

In the period 2000 to 2010 an area of 179 hectares was deforested in the project area. That’s 17.9 hectares per year, or 0.08%.

But instead of using this figure, Carbon Tanzania used the rate of deforestation in the reference region, which is under much greater pressure. This gave a deforestation rate of 0.93%, or 191 hectares per year. And far more carbon credits for the carbon project. The 2016 PDD estimates that the project would generate 16,011 carbon credits per year.

In 2020, Carbon Tanzania produced a new PDD. Carbon Tanzania increased the project area massively in 2021 to include the land of nine Datoga pastoralist communities. The 2020 PDD estimates that the new project would generate 172,359 carbon credits per year.

In the 2020 PDD, Carbon Tanzania writes that “Recent land use change within the project area consists predominantly of conversion from Acacia- Commiphora woodland to a form of shifting agriculture.”

Here’s a map showing the new project area and the reference region:

Once again, Carbon Tanzania uses the deforestation rate in the reference region. The PDD claims an average annual deforestation rate between 2007 and 2020 of 4.95%.

However, Global Forest Watch reveals that the total tree cover loss in the project area between 2001 and 2019 amounted to 43 hectares — or 0.13% over the entire period (green represents more than 10% canopy density tree cover, blue represents tree cover gain, and pink represents tree cover loss):

In other words, there was very little deforestation in the project area before the carbon project and therefore very little avoided deforestation as a result of the project.

3. The employment of game scouts

Trouw has now published a correction to its article about the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project. In the correction, Trouw states that, Carbon Tanzania “does not hire ‘village game scouts’ itself, as stated, but they are hired by the carbon credit project”.

I have corrected that sentence in the post on REDD-Monitor.

In its 2012 PDD, Carbon Tanzania states that, “UCRT serves as the intermediary between Carbon Tanzania and the community for the purpose of paying the community guards and community coordinator on a monthly basis.”

By the 2020 PDD Carbon Tanzania had amended this to read as follows: “UCRT serves as the intermediary between Carbon Tanzania and the community on certain issues.”

The 2012 PDD includes a database for “tracking payments to producers”. Below the database is the statement, “Project coordinator to pay producers a minimum of 60% of of [sic] revenues over the lifetime of the project.” The project coordinator is Carbon Tanzania. “Community Guards” are included in the list of “producers”:

The 2020 PDD includes a “Form for tracking payments to VGS” [Village Game Scouts]. This form includes the logos of both UCRT and Carbon Tanzania:

And the 2012 PDD states that,

Carbon Tanzania, through UCRT, began making monthly payments to community guards in June of 2011 and to a community coordinator shortly thereafter.

The 2016 PDD states that, “The project activities include, but are not limited to, the provision of financial support for land use planning and the employment of walinzi wajadi, or “community guards” as they are referred to hereafter.”

And a footnote explains that, “Walinzi wajadi, or community guards, are local private citizens and should not be mistaken for employees of the wildlife division or other government entities.”

The 2020 PDD includes a list of project interventions and activities. One of the project interventions on this list is to “Employ and train VGS to monitor forest disruption, land conversion and illegal poaching activities in project area.”

Carbon Tanzania’s 2023 Annual Report states that,

Through a participatory process community continued to employ Village Game Scouts (locally known as VGS) to patrol their own forests and undertake essential community-based monitoring.

And,

All VGS in the landscape have received training and certification as official Village Game Scouts (VGS), granting them recognition under a government system of village law enforcement and therefore strong authority to enforce the village’s participatory by-laws. The project continued to work on increasing the capacity of these local forest protectors and monitors and the local governance structures.

The 2023 Annual Report also includes a “Breakdown of Operational Costs”, which includes a payment of US$97,772 to Scouts. This money came entirely from sales of carbon credits:

4. Carbon Tanzania does not make public how much it gets from sales of carbon credits

It is true that Carbon Tanzania offers carbon credits for sale on its website. The price is US$15 each:

However, Carbon Tanzania sells the vast majority of its carbon credits to intermediaries. MyClimate is by far the biggest of these. And we don’t know how much Carbon Tanzania has received from sales to MyClimate (except in 2022, see below). Neither do we know how much MyClimate has earned from selling the carbon credits.

Carbon Tanzania’s 2023 Annual Report states that,

PVCs [Plan Vivo Certificates] from the Yaeda-Eyasi project are in high demand globally with most of the interest being from resellers in Europe and America. Sales of PVCs from long-term VERPAs [Voluntary Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements] with myClimate formed the bulk of these sales, as well as occasional orders for credits from other resellers.

The 2023 Annual Report includes a table showing where the carbon credits from the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape REDD project went from March 2023 to February 2024:

The words “Internal reporting only” are relevant here — the figures are not made public. The fact that more than 94% of sales were to resellers is also relevant.

In Carbon Tanzania’s 2022 Annual Report, the revenue column did show a series of figures:

This reveals that Carbon Tanzania received US$10 per carbon credit from direct sales in Tanzania. The price of sales to intermediaries such as MyClimate ranged from US$5 to US$12. Carbon Tanzania told Trouw that, “The figures were made public unintentionally.”

So for one year (2022) Carbon Tanzania unintentionally revealed how much it earned from sales of carbon credits. The company makes an undisclosed number of sales of carbon credits on its website for US$15. Apart from that the company does not reveal how much it gets from sales of carbon credits.