Political Ecologies of Carbon in Africa

The last decade has seen a wave of forest carbon projects across the world, many in Africa. These have been a response to the pressing challenges of climate change mitigation. Conserving or enhancing forest carbon stocks is presented as a way both to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and most importantly to offset emissions elsewhere. A range of new market-based mechanisms have been put in place to facilitate a variety of offset arrangements through payments and trade in carbon credits. This is occurring through a variety of institutional arrangements; some, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (UN-REDD and REDD-plus) process are formally linked with compliance mechanisms associated with international climate change negotiations and the Kyoto Protocol, while others are linked to voluntary carbon markets, regulated in different ways (see Arhin and Atela, this book; Fong-Cisneros, 2012). A mass of literature is now asking how forest carbon projects are unfolding, how they might be most effectively geared to climate mitigation challenges and how forest users might benefit from them. This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa in June 2015, available online: https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138824836.