Towards Sustainable Carbon Markets in Tanzania

project summary

The SUSTCARB project seeks to promote more sustainable international carbon markets. It does so by examining how new market standards and technologies for measurement and monitoring are changing how carbon projects unfold on the ground in Tanzania. It focuses on three aspects. First, the costs and benefits associated with carbon markets across rural people in project site to market actors at the international level. Second, the role of carbon markets in legitimizing very different livelihoods and lifestyles across Global South and North contexts. Third, how new market standards and technologies create a need for new skillsets and capacities and how this, in turn, shapes how different people and institutions can participate in carbon markets. The research unfolds in three steps. First, we map all existing and planned carbon projects in Tanzania and, through desk-based research, examine the reasons for why some projects have been abandoned (for a subset of projects). Second, we do in-depth and on-the-ground work in three project sites, seeking to understand how the carbon project shapes access to resources and livelihoods on the ground. Third, we trace the connections from project sites to the international carbon markets using extended case study approaches seeking to understand the role of new standards and technologies, as well as how carbon market actors legitimize different livelihoods and lifestyles. To ensure that our research is relevant to and impacts policy and practice, SUSTCARB will have continuous engagement with Tanzanian and international carbon market actors through annual stakeholder forums that are held throughout the project. Specifically, SUSTCARB seeks to inform ongoing negotiations of a new international compliance market under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement as well as contribute important insights to the booming international carbon markets that are seeing a surge of interest from corporate buyers that have made net zero climate pledges in recent years. The project is implemented in a collaboration between the University of Dodoma, Sokoine University of Agriculture and University of Copenhagen and involves the training of two PhD students and two postdocs.