Ghana has become the first country in Africa to be issued jurisdictional forest carbon credits under the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART), with initial payments of about US$43 million expected from buyers including the LEAF Coalition, Citi Newsroom reports.
ART said on Thursday, November 12, that it had issued 6.57 million credits to the Government of Ghana under its TREES standard, for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Ghana is the third country to receive TREES credits, after Guyana and Costa Rica, ART said.
ART also said they are the first TREES credits to be labelled Core Carbon Principles (CCP) Approved in its registry.
'Issuance is not payment'
The announcement was made at the Ghana Pavilion at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, where Ghana's Ambassador to Türkiye, Abdul Nasiru-Deen, read a statement on behalf of Lands and Natural Resources Minister Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, according to Citi Newsroom.
The statement said the expected US$43 million is linked to the anticipated purchase of about four million tonnes of verified emission reductions at US$10 to US$13 per tonne. "Issuance is not payment. The issuance confirms the verified credits, but not the payments," it said, Citi Newsroom reported.
The credits cover verified emission reductions achieved between 2017 and 2021, Citi Newsroom and allAfrica report. allAfrica, carrying a Bird Story Agency report, put the number at about 6.5 million.
"The credits do not represent the carbon stored in Ghana's forests. They represent verified emission reductions against established benchmarks," said Dr Joseph Appiah Gyapong, Director of Climate Change at the Forestry Commission, according to Citi Newsroom.
Who pays, and who benefits
Emergent, which coordinates the LEAF Coalition, said the issuance allows transactions to go ahead with coalition participants including the governments of the UK and Norway and companies including Amazon, Bayer, PwC and the Walmart Foundation.
Emergent said money will flow through an independent financial intermediary, and that under an agreed benefit-sharing plan more than two-thirds of net proceeds will go to local stakeholders, including farmers, communities and traditional authorities. The programme covers about 2.5 million hectares across Ghana's cocoa-forest landscape, ART and Emergent said.
Ghana previously received about US$21.8 million in Forest Carbon Partnership Facility payments in 2023 and 2024 under the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme, the Minister's statement said, according to Citi Newsroom.
A separate pricing row
The US$10 to US$13 price comes after Minority Chief Whip Frank Annoh-Dompreh on Wednesday questioned a US$5 to US$25 per tonne range in a separate proposed carbon credit agreement with South Korea, which is before Parliament. He compared it with a global average he put at about US$40 per tonne, 3News reported.