Farm Gai Kaisa

CNaught maintains a very high quality standard for all projects in the portfolios we manage. To ensure that a project meets this standard, we perform due diligence that’s backed up by third-party ratings agencies’ independent due diligence. 

 
Additionality:
This project has high additionality, meaning it is very unlikely that this project activity could have occurred in the absence of carbon funding. Without carbon finance, the facility would have continued its existing charcoal briquette production for European export markets rather than transitioning to biochar production. Biochar doesn’t generate direct revenue and is distributed freely to farmers, making the project dependent on carbon revenue to replace its original income stream from charcoal sales. Furthermore, the project activity is not required or encouraged by any local regulations and is not common practice in Namibia.

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Over-Crediting:
This project has low risk of over-crediting, meaning it is likely to have accurately accounted for the amount of carbon being sequestered. The project uses sound methodological approaches for measuring biochar carbon content and permanence, which Calyx Global also highlighted in their review. The project also uses robust accounting approaches to measure both embodied emissions from feedstock production and process emissions from the biochar manufacturing facility. Like most biochar projects, this project only claims carbon removals for the portion that is sequestered in soil for centuries. The project does not account for market leakage effects that could occur from increased charcoal briquette production elsewhere, to meet displaced demand. However, we believe the potential leakage is unlikely to place this project at significant risk of over-crediting as the project was exporting briquettes to Germany where only sustainably sourced charcoal may be used.

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Durability:
This project activity is highly durable as we are confident in its ability to provide permanent emissions removals. The project has implemented a comprehensive tracking system with geo-tagged and time-stamped photos and videos documenting farmers’ biochar application to soil. This robust verification system provides high confidence that the biochar has been correctly incorporated into agricultural soils where it will remain sequestered long-term. While fire presents some reversal risk, we find this risk to be low for the project area.

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Double-Counting:
The project credits have a very low risk of being double counted. There are no regulatory obligations being met by the project activity and the project’s registry, Puro.earth, has mechanisms in place to ensure that the project is not registered in any other programs. The biochar distribution areas are not co-located with any agricultural carbon projects that could claim enhanced soil organic carbon benefits, eliminating the risk of overlapping claims for the same carbon sequestration.