By Mike Loewe Grahamstown Correspondent
A 400-HECTARE area of Eastern Cape thicket in the Kirkwood area is poised to become the first Eastern Cape project to earn more than R1-million a year in carbon credits in a bid to reduce the world‘s greenhouse gases.
The area falls under the Baviaanskloof Mega Reserve. Former water affairs and forestry department technical adviser Mike Powell, who heads the Rhodes Restoration Research Group, said at the annual meeting of the Thicket Forum – taking place at the 42nd annual congress of the Grassland Society of Southern Africa at Rhodes University – said that Eastern Cape thicket which had been degraded by farming and was successfully rehabilitated, was able to store four times more carbon in the soil.
He said the Eastern Cape needed to rehabilitate 800 000ha of thicket. “A whole biome has been trashed and needs restoration.”
The coming carbon economy could earn goat farmers three times more per hectare.
International scientist and NMMU botanist Professor Richard Cowling said while a good deal of paperwork and accredited research was needed to take advantage of the carbon credit economy set up by the Kyoto Agreement‘s Clean Development Mechanism, money was starting to flow from developed nations to developing nations like Brazil.
He said the Eastern Cape had 112 areas of thicket which were available for restoration and that carbon credits of around $10 a hectare annually over a 20-year period could be more lucrative than goat farming. This dollar rate was linked to the ability of restored thicket to produce soil carbon.
Research had shown that the Eastern Cape‘s semi-arid thicket was like a “Lilliputian forest” with “millions of stems” which were able to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the soil at a fast rate.
However, research had shown that degraded thicket did not restore itself even if grazing was stopped, and needed active rehabilitation. Farmers who ran restoration projects could still farm goats and sheep while earning credits and he predicted this would be happening increasingly in five to 10 years‘ time.