The African wellness and beauty market has been buoyed in the past couple of years by rising interest in indigenous and organic produce from the continent and its unblemished environs such as the Zambezi Valley, nestled in the UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve. This has coincided with a greater appreciation of carbon credit benefits anchored on broad participation in conservation and ecosystem protection. Further, the call to bring practice and policy closer to the people is expanding the reach of ecosystem management. Global efforts to address climate change have well positioned high level state parties, global civil society and business, regrettably generally neglecting community based natural resource management frameworks led by communities who live with the resources and forests. Carbon credits are generated through activities or projects that reduce or remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere.
Such actions include re-wilding projects that plant trees or protect existing forests. These projects can receive carbon credits for the carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere through absorption by trees. According to experts, Africa is home to some of the planet’s most important natural carbon repositories – including forests, grasslands, peatlands, and mangroves – giving the continent a huge potential on the global carbon market. Yet, under the current system customary land ownership and the role of communities are not recognized. Seeing the potential for an inclusive carbon credit system in both practice and theory, the Utariri programme set to work seeking redress for the disenfranchised.
The logic is that the same land enriching “carbon credit cowboys” is the same land on which communities’ source non timber forest products and they should rightly accrue benefits from both- carbon credits and non-timber forest products. The vision being an inclusive and legitimate carbon reward mechanism at community level. An integrated biodiversity, climate change and livelihoods programme funded by the Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe, Utariri is a resilience building intervention launched by Zimbabwe’s Patron of Environment and Wildlife, the First Lady, Dr. Auxillia Mnangagwa in March 2023. Utariri invited Kanakisa to work with the Programme to complement its biodiversity and climate change focus by educating people on the relationship between food, personal care, and the environment.
The knowledge compels people to look more closely at the nutritional elements of the different types of food they were consuming. This is resulting in a return to, and a greater appreciation and awareness of organic products, long neglected in favour of refined goods. An interest in both non timber forest products and organically cultivated plants to produce a variety of healthy and nutritious consumables for the skin, hair and body has spread globally. This has marked a conscious departure from a prior focus solely on the cosmetic effects of these products to one on overall health. Consequently, Africa’s nature therapy industry is estimated at over 40 billion dollars annually and is set to become a vital part of the economic sector.
More people, including subsistence farmers in the Zambezi Valley, are better informed about healthy food choices and organic cosmetics. Kanakisa can be loosely translated to beautify or to be the most beautiful in chi-Shona, is a women-owned, all-natural skincare and functional food company, working with women harvesters and farmers of both genders. Harvesting of non-timber forest products is a sustainable and abiding tradition in southern Africa, mainly done by women in rural areas to make porridge, jam, relish, drinks and generate some income. The COVID-19 pandemic saw this subsistence activity of harvesting non-timber products becoming a core activity for many, but few are reaping the benefits of the carbon market which allows companies and governments to continue emitting greenhouse gases against carbon credits generated by investment into a project that is designed to avoid, reduce, or remove the impact of such emissions. Utariri, through strategic advocacy, addresses historical binaries in the laws governing biodiversity in Zimbabwe, including carbon credits, building adaptive capacity for communities to respond to the negative effects of climate change, and human-wildlife conflict ensuring a holistic approach to landscape management. Simultaneously, Kanakisa is endeavouring to eliminate the negative impacts on conservation of biodiversity, and improve community livelihoods by way of consistent and secure income generation.
Together Kanakisa and Utariri are also championing a lack of market access and skills development for local non timber product harvesters in the Zambezi Valley. The reality is simply that global interest in organic and wild products has grown immensely and Kanakisa is well poised to take advantage of this growing enthusiasm. Southern Africa has some unique and spectacular therapeutic plants that are not well known on the international market. One of Kanakisa’s products – oil from the Ximenia Caffra plant- is currently the most sought-after skincare ingredient. Zimbabwe plays a crucial role in both the preservation of these indigenous plants and their sustainable utilisation. “Our purpose as Kanakisa is to give our customers an unmatched holistic experience, through conscientious sourcing and high-quality production,” said Kanakisa Co-Founder and Director, Chishamiso Musariri. “By training women to be certified and take harvested and processed products to the international market we aspire to empower communities economically, through market access and socially, through initiatives that strengthen and build personal and community skills and resilience.”
As proven by the uptake, the international market responds exceedingly well to Zimbabwean products because of their high quality and their natural or organic status. However, nature therapy is still a foreign concept to many of those living within reach of these forest products. For example, Angwa District is Baobab land, but the versatility of this wondrous fruit is not fully exploited. One of Kanakisa’s harvesters Grace, says she has only ever eaten the pulp of the fruit. She had heard that coffee could also be made from the Baobab but had no knowledge of this. Perched atop a small hill by the Angwa river, a lithe Grace lugs sacks filled to the brim with Baobab into her shop. She ducks out again to the delivery truck with the sacks full of fruit sitting in the shade of the mahogany trees and picks up another bag of the dehulled fruit. The fruit covered in white pulp comes from women harvesters in two villages.
The following day, another village will drop off its consignment. Grace passes the women sitting on the veranda with piles of dried hibiscus flowers. The dull winter sun filters through the canopy of the trees shining on the playing children whose mothers are sorting through the mounds of the red plant, separating the husks from the flowers. The bottle of cold pressed oil presented by Kanakisa is passed around by the ladies on the veranda. Grace exclaims at the clarity of the oil and rubs some on her skin. In a few minutes all the women have tried the oil on their skin. They can’t believe that the same fruit piled up inside the shop can produce an oil that makes the skin so radiant. “Look how beautiful we are,” say the women.
But without recognition by the carbon credit system of the centrality of communities and group rights in both practice and theory, much of this effort could be lost. Extensive sensitization of communities is needed to capacitate them to respond to the technical character of the carbon trading ecosystem, to prevent alienation and prejudice in the distribution of rewards and benefits. The major contention manifests itself in that policy makers and governments gazette laws and regulations that govern the harvesting and protection of natural resources, when in practice it is communities that are initiating and driving afforestation, reforestation and revegetation activities. Utariri also suggests that an integrated carbon and biodiversity credit may be a more comprehensive climate financing mechanism which meets both biodiversity protection and climate action. Regulation of the voluntary carbon credits projects is essential. Under SI 150 of 2023 the carbon credits market is set out under the following objectives: 1, to provide for the control and management of carbon credit trading projects and 2, to provide the legal framework necessary for ensuring sustainable development and account for the country’s contribution towards global efforts to reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions.
Although Zimbabwe now has the guidelines, there is no legislation founding such regulations. Zimbabwe’s climate change objectives require legislative anchorage to prescribe climate actions for multiple stakeholders. The historic policy gap regarding carbon financing has been addressed through sections of the regulations. One example is the placing of an obligation on project proponents to authenticate emission reductions within a specified time and obtain a Carbon Credit Certificate from a Carbon Credit Issuing Body, and thereafter write to the designated operating authority for listing on the Zimbabwe carbon credits register. The carbon registry and subsequent register are creations of section 15 of the regulations. The authenticated emissions reduction, together with the register are a much-needed tool to foster and promote transparency and credibility of carbon credits projects in Zimbabwe.
The Designated National Authority (DNA), founded under section 5 of the Regulations, is vested with formulating carbon credits standardized baselines and methodologies for Zimbabwe. According to section 12 of the Regulations, the community is entitled to a quarter of the 70% share which accrues to investor. The state under the Regulations takes the remaining 30%. The community benefits are supposed to be invested in consultation with the local authority. The project proponent is required to carry out feasibility studies which include adequate and meaningful consultations with all affected parties before the project is implemented. Under Schedule 1 of the Regulations, a Stakeholder and Public Participation Plan based on prior informed consent by each individual participant or household representative shall be mandatory in all projects involving the local community.
This provision is consistent with the right to free prior and informed consent. When all is said and done, a new empowerment logic has been set in motion, the Carbon Credits Regulations are progressive and will ultimately provide a vehicle for meaningful community participation in carbon credit projects in Zimbabwe, paving the way for companies like Kanakisa to bring our historically disadvantaged communities into the fourth industrial revolution.
