By Jana Hofmann, Carbon Advisor
Here at Climate Neutral Group, we are very proud to have played a part in the launch of a new water carbon credit project that will provide piped water to low income households across Africa.
This first-of-its-kind Gold Standard Project is a project of VEI, a Dutch NGO, who are the world’s leading water operator. The project has launched with the building of new water connections for more than 2,000 people in Arusha, Tanzania where more than half of the citizens do not have access to clean water due to the fact that the municipal water supply and sanitation authority (AUWSA) simply do not have the capacity to provide clean water to all residents in the area.
As a result of the project, residents will gain access to safe water thus using less fuelwood for boiling water – a traditional way to treat unsafe drinking water.
The project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to generate revenue from carbon credits. This will help install more access points, expand the existing water distribution pipe networks and connect more people to safe water in the low income areas.
Climate Neutral Group’s Role
Silvana Claassen, a CNG’s Senior Carbon Advisor, and I travelled to Arusha in October 2019 to carry out a local stakeholder consultation – a first crucial step in Gold Standard registration. We engaged with more than 200 people from 7 different wards on how the project will contribute to improve their lives. Silvana has extensive experience in carbon project development and auditing, whereas my experience lies in stakeholder engagements, household surveys and SDG assessments.
The stakeholder consultation was a challenging task in terms of following the strictness and the robustness of the Gold Standard guidelines whilst applying them to the reality on the ground. We are happy to have successfully achieved our objective of obtaining the views of the people from Arusha on the project.
We could not have achieved this goal without the incredible support from the local VEI team and a crash course in Kiswahili (karibu, hajambo, asante sana, etc.)! The participants’ input was invaluable and it was heart-warming to see how both women and men engaged with passion. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, emphasising a strong desire to get started as soon as possible.
Next Steps
The next step for us is to register the project with the Gold Standard. We are certain that the project will help uplift and improve the livelihood of (peri-)urban communities in Arusha. We are very excited and will continue working towards creating a positive impact wherever we can.