Mozambique paid by the World Bank for reducing emissions from deforestation

20 October 2021

Mozambique is the first country to receive payments from the World Bank administered Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) Carbon Fund for its efforts for reducing emissions from deforestation.

Through the FCPF’s Carbon fund, the World Bank paid USD6.4 million to the country for reducing 1.28 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions since 2019 under its Emission Reductions Payment Agreement (ERPA).

Under this programme Mozambique could receive up to USD50 million for reducing up to 10 million tons of emissions in six districts of the Zambézia Province by the end of 2024. The Zambézia Integrated Landscape Management Program also aims at improving the lives of rural populations in the area while tackling deforestation and forest degradation.

This payment was released following the submission of an official monitoring report confirming the emission reductions and an independent third-party accredited verification conducted by ASTER Global in accordance with a verification standard. The verification confirmed 2.04 million emission reductions resulting from reduced emissions from deforestation, of which 1.28 million were paid by the FCPF Carbon Fund and the remaining will be available to Mozambique to sell to third-party buyers or use for other purposes.

“Although verification of emission reductions from REDD+* programs have happened in the past, these occurred as part of results-based mechanisms, as opposed to market-based mechanisms, such as the FCPF Carbon Fund, where the level of environmental integrity and stringency is much higher”, informed Andres Espejo, World Bank.

Some of these high-quality carbon credits will be retransferred to Mozambique for its use in its NDC and some others may be now transacted in the markets.

In a deepening climate crisis, the international forest monitoring community has great expectations and believes that these payment agreements can incentivize local actors to protect and regenerate the world's forests.

The World Bank’s FCPF and several of their donors are GFOI Leads partners. Mozambique hosted the last in-person GFOI Plenary in 2019. It is great to see the progress that Mozambique has continued to make since then, despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic. GFOI would like to congratulate colleagues in Mozambique on this important milestone.

 

* Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation — commonly known as REDD+

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