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The Zanzibar Community Restoration Project is located on the Zanzibar islands of Pemba and Unguja, off the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. Although once heavily forested, Zanzibar’s forests have been subject to widespread exploitation, and remaining forests and mangroves are being lost at a rate of 1% per year. This restoration project combines grant funding and climate finance to scaling of the small amount of mangrove restoration that was included in the HIMA (Hifadhi ya Misitu ya Asili ya jamii) REDD+ Program to 760 hectares of community-based mangrove restoration and 2,572 hectares of Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) in coral rag forests.
The Project aims to generate Verified Emission Removals (VERRs) by implementing activities within 50 discrete community-managed forest areas (CoFMAs). CoFMAs are how local community groups acquire legally recognized tenure and natural resource use rights, including carbon rights. Project activities will include 1) the restoration of over 760 hectares of mangroves on degraded coastal areas; 2) Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) activities in over 2,500 hectares of coral rag forest; 3) Community training, patrolling, and boundary demarcation; 4) Establishing alternative livelihood programs including conservation agriculture with vegetable growing groups, small-scale livestock, and beekeeping.
This project is currently being implemented in collaboration with Terra Global Capital, with its HQ in San Fransico, USA with grant funding from IUCN’s WALD Innovation Facility. Terra Global has been working in Zanzibar since 2014 after signing a REDD+ agreement with the Zanzibar Department of Forestry and JUMIJAZA. This early work has mostly focused on supporting the preparation HIMA REDD+ Program for accessing climate finance. In the last 3 years, Terra and JUMIJAZA have undergone investment readiness work for the HIMA REDD+ Program for the forest protection portion of the work with the CoFMAs. This investment readiness work has been funded by Terra Global and by grants. The HIMA REDD+ Project is now investment ready and has been approved for a USD $1.7 million private sector climate finance by the Terra Global-managed vehicle, the Terra Bella NbS Fund. However, this private sector climate finance for the HIMA REDD+ Program only included a very small amount of mangrove restoration due to the higher costs of restoration implementation. With this support of additional WALD grant funding from the Innovation Facility, blended with additional private sector climate finance, it is now possible to scale the restoration activities to be large enough to be self-sustaining with carbon financing over the life of the Zanzibar Community Restoration Project, which will have a crediting period of 40 years (with renewal), and longevity of 100 years, contingent to approval by the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar.