The Makame Savannah project protects more than 350,000 hectares of wildlife rich forests and savannah in northern Tanzania from destruction and degradation. The Masai have been herding cattle in the area for more than 200 years with a traditional approach to pastoralism that is inherently sustainable. For the Masai, the health of the landscape is critical for providing livestock grazing, a traditional practice that is essential for the preservation of their culture. The Masai protect this valuable habitat that provides a seasonal wildlife dispersal area for Tarangire’s migratory wildlife, preventing at least 268,000 trees from being felled every year.
Makame’s forests and expansive landscapes are seen by the increasing number of people migrating into the area as unused, ready for agricultural conversion. Such perceptions have, in part, contributed to the region’s high deforestation rate, which currently sits at nine times the national average.
Without action, these ancient forests, the irreplaceable wildlife they contain and the traditional Masai way of life they support will lose out in an increasingly changeable and populous environment.
Forest-protection carbon credits address the underlying drivers of deforestation by offering financial incentives to conserve forests. When trees are protected, the stored carbon is prevented from entering the atmosphere.
Based on the avoidance of emissions, a corresponding volume of carbon credits can be sold to businesses and corporations to support their existing decarbonisation strategies. Revenue from these sales is returned to local people, thus supporting daily costs of living and reducing the economic necessity to fell trees. In this way, forests are given a greater value than when cut down.
The Makame Savannah project has been developed in partnership with the Makame Wildlife Management Area (WMA). The WMA structure gives the five participating Masai villages legal management rights over their land and resources, areas that support their seasonal grazing activities in accordance with their traditional semi-nomadic lifestyle, a system known as ronjo. Supported by legally-defined land rights, the Masai are better able to continue traditional practices without facing conflict with other, non-pastoralist, land-users. This project demonstrates how climate justice is inextricably linked to a respect for and promotion of Indigenous peoples’ rights.
To ensure our projects are designed with the highest standards of quality and integrity, we work with leading forest carbon scientists to set our methodologies and project baselines. As such, we are confident that the Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape project is accurately and appropriately verified in accordance with the latest climate science. However, we recognise (and support) the ongoing developments of these standards and are committed to improving our processes in the coming years.
The Makame WMA has seen a 980% revenue increase between 2017 to 2021 with over $1 million in carbon revenue earned through the sale of carbon credits so far. This finance has allowed local people to increase expenditure on community infrastructure. Education has been a particular priority, with more than $359,000 directed to the improvement of classrooms, dormitories and teacher’s offices in addition to covering boarding and school fees.
A further $574,000 has been directed to healthcare initiatives, supporting people from five different villages with hospital care and improved access to clinics. Investments have also been made to strengthen local government and enable village by-laws to be better enforced.
As a wet season dispersal range for elephants, eland and other nomadic mammals, the area provides critical habitat for wildlife in the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem. It is a breeding ground for the highly endangered African wild dog and home to at least 30 species of Africa’s iconic large mammals.
To protect the region’s invaluable wildlife as well as protecting the forest, the community uses carbon revenue to employ Village Game Scouts (VGS) in the WMA. Between 2019 and 2021, the VGS team successfully reduced illegal poaching activities by 90 percent.
Makame Savannah is accredited by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) Standard.
Given the complexity of these landscapes, verification is by no means straightforward. To ensure our projects are designed with the highest standards of quality and integrity, we work with world-leading forest carbon scientists at TerraCarbon to set our methodologies and project baselines. As such, we are confident that Makame Savannah is accurately and appropriately verified in accordance with the very latest climate science. However, at the same time, we recognise (and support) the ongoing developments of these standards and understand that these processes will continue to be improved upon.
Before the Makame Savannah project became operational, the WMA was seeing an increase in deforestation at a rate nine times higher than the national average, due to shifting agriculture. While the Masai had the desire to protect their land, they did not have the financial means to do so. With carbon revenue, the communities are able to protect 364,000 hectares keeping more than one million trees standing and avoiding 150,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions. Not only does this project offer significant finance to fund forest protection activities, but the revenue also addresses the underlying drivers of deforestation.
The Makame Savannah project issues credits conservatively, allocating the maximum percentage of generated credits to a non-permanence buffer pool. This is to safeguard against any potential, future loss of forests from the project area.
In a broader sense, the integration of a 30-year forest management scheme into the local community and district planning systems, structures and socio-economic fabric builds a more general permanence to the protection of natural resources for community benefits.
Makame is a vast (4,000 km2) community conservation area in northern Tanzania, forming part of the greater Manyara-Tarangire ecosystem. Northern Tanzania is a truly beautiful part of the world and one where wildlife remains amazingly abundant, even outside of the state protected areas system. Part of the reason for this
Thinking and acting for long-term biodiversity conservation On Saturday the 27th May, Carbon Tanzania reached a milestone, the result of 18 months of training and planning, by signing a 30-year carbon contract with Makame Community Wildlife Management Area (CWMA). This contract, the first of its kind in Tanzania, outlines the
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Image credits: Carbon Tanzania/Roshni Lodhia/Paul Joyson-Hicks.
Director of Operations
David is a dedicated conservationist with both an excellent academic record and extensive field experience in designing and implementing practical conservation and agricultural project work. At Carbon Tanzania, he oversees the highly technical aspects of project operations, while also using his interpersonal and language skills to communicate the many and complex details of our projects to our partner communities and field collaborators.
Director of Finance
Alpha is a Certified Public Accountant with a degree in accountancy and finance. Alpha is responsible for overseeing all the finance and accounting systems both within the company and across our projects. Alpha’s work with the communities also ensures that they are able to plan the financial management and implement best practices in the allocation of the revenues from their successful natural resource protection activities.
Co-founder
Marc oversees project operations, often in the field as well as from the Arusha base, and leads the search to find and develop new areas where our approach can deliver lasting results. As a co-founder of Carbon Tanzania, maintaining a connection with the landscapes in which Carbon Tanzania works is critical to Marc.
Co-founder
After an established career as one of East Africa’s leading professional outdoor, trekking and wildlife guides, Jo co-founded Carbon Tanzania. Jo’s focus is to ensure business sustainability through financial management and sales, and to ensure that the company has the financial capacity to scale when opportunities arise.
