Fishermen gather by their boats on the western bank of Vanga Bay before the mangrove forests surrounding Vanga village. (Photo courtesy of the Reach Alliance)
On the East Coast of Kenya along Gazi Bay grows one of the world’s most studied mangrove forests. In 2001, Mark Huxham, a biologist and ecologist from Scotland, began researching the forests to study their health and impact on marine life, including fish stocks. But he was soon confronted by some of the elders of Gazi and Makongeni, two fishing villages whose communities depend upon the sea life of Gazi Bay and its mangroves.
“One evening in the village, some of the village elders came and took me by the hand … took me to the madrasa, sat me down on a very small chair,” Huxham recalls. “‘Where is the benefit for us from your work?’ the elders asked me.” Huxham’s research demonstrated the importance of mangroves and coastal ecosystems to fish stocks—something important for fishermen—but the prospect of increased fish yields in the future, while promising, did not hold strong appeal to the community, given their immediate food insecurities and endemic poverty. The average household income in Gazi is $20 per month, about half of what the World Bank defines to be the poverty line. Their livelihoods, more generally, and food security, specifically, were the villagers’ main concerns.
Huxham was motivated to have an immediate positive impact on the villages and the coastal mangroves he was studying. “I had to look very hard and think, how I can use this scientific information to bring benefits to local people, and particularly to bring money, to be blunt,” he says. He explored what was then an emerging method to generate funds for the village: selling carbon credits generated from mangrove forest conservation and reforestation. At the time, carbon credit markets were in their infancy, and by his own admission, Huxham did not know that much about how the carbon credit market worked.
A carbon credit represents one metric ton of captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and their sale offers an innovative way to offset emissions for those who purchase the credits. The economic value of a carbon credit is determined by the market and is expected to be a true reflection of stored carbon (i.e., captured and stored through conservation). Organizations that are left with unavoidable emissions from their activities or are unable to meet their emission-reduction goals, including some of the world’s largest companies, purchase these credits as offsets to meet their carbon emission reduction commitments. By selling carbon credits, villagers are essentially compensated for their efforts to conserve the mangrove forests.
In 2008, Huxham and his collaborators—local scientists from the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI)—founded the Association for Coastal Ecosystem Services (ACES), a registered Scottish charity that collaborates closely with villagers, scientists, government researchers, and other NGOs. ACES, they envisioned, would help implement and oversee the pioneering carbon credit projects in Gazi and Makongeni villages. Support from ACES includes co-publishing yearly reports, organizing audits, and selling and accounting for generated carbon credits.
Mikoko Pamoja (MP), which translates to “Mangroves Together” in Swahili, officially launched in 2013 as the world’s first community-led blue carbon credit project on the voluntary market. “Blue carbon” refers to carbon credits generated through coastal or marine conservation. Through conservation efforts, Mikoko Pamoja started bringing in revenue to the villages with the sale of carbon credits, which the community has invested in infrastructure priorities determined through a locally led and democratic process. Clean cookstoves were introduced in households, water pumps and wells were installed, roads were paved, and new school and health-care facilities were built.
“There used to be no accessibility to fresh water,” says Josphat Mwamba Mtwana, former Mikoko Pamoja project coordinator. “Women would travel a long distance to get this water. They would get water using open wells and manual pumps, which were prone to accidents, prone to diseases … but now, because we are earning from carbon crediting, we are reversing the situation. We have channeled fresh water into the community; we have installed water tanks and pumps.”
Meanwhile, on the southeastern tip of Kenya, another cluster of fishing villages had also been conducting conservation work in their mangrove forests, beginning in 2004. In 2017, when the Vanga, Kiwegu, and Jimbo villages learned of Mikoko Pamoja’s success, they approached Huxham and ACES to assist them in developing their own blue carbon credit project. After two more years of collaboration and preparation, the Vanga Blue Forest (VBF) project launched in 2019. The Vanga Blue mangrove forest is three times the size of the Mikoko Pamoja site and supports more than 8,700 people from three villages. To date, Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest have generated approximately $300,000 for local development.
In a world where development practitioners and policy makers are seeking big wins, $300,000 may seem a small amount. But for these hard-to-reach coastal villages, which have barely seen the fruits of development reach them, these resources have been transformational.
The ecological, financial, and development success of the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest projects illustrate the importance and promise of enabling communities to lead their own conservation programs. They provide valuable insights into how small and remote coastal villages can implement effective conservation and restoration strategies to reduce the degradation of mangrove forests, sell carbon credits, and in turn reinvest those earned resources back into their communities. Their success depends on adapting the initiatives to local contexts to ensure that they are rooted in the communities, are sustainable, and provide diversified value (e.g., environmental, economic) to the community. Because they are community-led, Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest ensure that the coastal villages benefit, including boons from the sustainable management of coastal ecosystems, the replenishment of marine life (essential for fishing villages), the introduction of alternative livelihood opportunities, and the generation of resources to support local economic development.
A Virtuous Cycle
Conventional development programs typically focus on delivering services—such as health care, education, and financial interventions—to marginalized, hard-to-reach populations. However, when resources for sustainable development cannot be delivered, helping those hard-to-reach communities often located in the periphery is especially challenging. This is particularly true when the benefits from development, such as those that result from climate resilience, can only be realized in situ. Consequently, these communities often are left behind, deemed either too remote or too small in scale to have a significant impact.
On the outskirts of Vanga village, mangrove saplings grow near a previously barren salt flat that has been revitalized using novel hydrological methods that draw water from the Indian Ocean. (Photo courtesy of the Reach Alliance)
The villages in the Vanga and Gazi bays have implemented and maintained their own effective solutions to address climate change and drive local economic development. Their solutions have not been imported or delivered from afar, nor have they been copied or replicated from foreign models. Instead, these remote Kenyan fishing villages have embraced mangrove conservation and the sale of carbon credits to generate resources for bolstering community development.
Mangrove trees are highly effective at storing carbon, reserving up to 10 times more carbon than land-based, terrestrial forests. And yet, approximately half of the world’s mangrove forests are threatened, and 20 percent are endangered or critically endangered. In short, one of the world’s most effective carbon sinks is being neglected.
The Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest approach to mangrove conservation and local development leverages three systems that feed into each other in positive ways. The first is local mangrove conservation and restoration. The second is carbon credit financing to generate resources for local development. The third involves community cocreation, contributing to the local ownership of the blue carbon project. Together, they have a synergistic effect, feeding into one another to create a virtuous cycle.
Villages manage their mangrove forests to increase carbon capture and reduce the amount of carbon that would otherwise be emitted from the degradation of their ecosystem. The stored carbon has an economic value and is sold as carbon credits on international markets from which the earnings are invested back into the village. The communities themselves codesign, implement, and maintain the blue carbon initiatives, ensuring that they are sustainable and self-managed. More than 10 years later, ACES is still involved in these projects as a nonprofit partner, supporting the projects and the management of the sale of the carbon credits.
“Looking ahead, I see the Mikoko Pamoja project evolving to address more community needs, integrating sustainable practices, and serving as a model for other coastal communities,” says Kassim Juma, the current Mikoko Pamoja coordinator. “My goal is to continue fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of the mangrove ecosystem while ensuring that conservation efforts translate into tangible benefits for the community.”
In this virtuous cycle, everyone wins: The villages develop the local capacity to do the right thing by protecting the coastal environment and mangrove ecosystem, while ensuring that their developmental needs and priorities are met.
From Depletion to Regeneration
Carbon credit projects require an accurate assessment of the baseline scenario—a detailed description of the project site in order to estimate the volume of carbon emissions that would have occurred had the project not been implemented. Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest used a holistic assessment of baseline conditions to determine initially the rate at which the forest was degrading. This evaluation included historical ecological data, such as satellite imagery of forest canopy area and animal biodiversity; socioeconomic factors, including community forest use and population growth; and a detailed analysis of the drivers of degradation, such as harvesting for construction material and firewood.
Eighty-seven percent of community members in Gazi have historically depended on mangroves for fuel and building materials. Over the past several decades, growing populations in the region have increased the demand for these resources, accelerating degradation. “People were unaware of the critical role of the mangrove ecosystem,” says Juma, who grew up in Gazi. “To them, a mangrove was just a normal tree.”
Satellite imaging data shows that the mangrove forest in the Gazi Bay region shrunk by almost 1 percent each year between 1985 and 2010. Land-use pressures to exploit the forests, combined with a lack of enforcement of existing harvesting laws, contributed to the forest’s rapid depletion. Unregulated cutting disrupted breeding grounds for fish, which undermined the villagers’ food security and livelihoods because of their dependence on fishing. Vanga, Kiwegu, and Jimbo villages in Vanga Bay experienced mangrove degradation at a similar clip. Satellite imaging of the 460-hectare project area in Vanga Bay showed severe rates of degradation between 1991 and 2016. Thirty percent of the villagers there rely on fishing as their main source of work.
Simply put, Kenya’s coastal mangrove forests were disappearing at an alarming rate, and with them the villagers’ primary livelihoods. In the absence of any interventions, Mikoko Pamoja’s 117-hectare project area would decrease to 90 hectares over the 20 years from the start of the project in 2013. Vanga Blue Forest’s 460-hectare forest would decrease to 424 hectares over a similar 20-year period, beginning in 2019.
Such projected depletions would also result in more than 220,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) being released into the atmosphere. Given baseline assessments, over the 20-year duration of the two projects, the cumulative carbon savings from the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest areas are estimated to reach an impressive 170,000 metric tons of GHGs stored.
These mangrove forests provide critical habitat support for other shared benefits beyond just storing carbon. Villagers we interviewed noted that once-depleted fish stocks gradually increased and revitalized the local fishing economy. Efforts to grow alternative sources of livelihood based on sustainable forest conservation—such as beekeeping, seagrass harvesting, and ecotourism—have also become important sources of local economic development.
Through barazas (Swahili for “councils” or “large community gatherings”) and in consultation with ACES, community members participating in Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest determine local development priorities through a democratic voting system. Unlike so many other development-assistance projects, the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest initiatives are locally managed, and the funds generated from their efforts to conserve and mitigate climate change are theirs to direct. For example, communities voted to delegate some funds for flood-resistant roads one year, as well as directing funds over multiple years to develop new schools.
Since 2013, Mikoko Pamoja has generated approximately $17,000 each year for the villages. The earnings have been invested in several local development projects. For example, the funds financed the installation of two freshwater wells and pumps in Gazi village and connected them to village households and communal water-collection points. Collecting water is no longer a five-hour daily task for women and children in the village, freeing up women’s time for other income-generating activities and increasing children’s access to education.
Vanga Blue Forest, the much larger project of the two, has already generated around $120,000 in total revenue since its implementation in 2019. These earnings have been allocated to several local development projects, including constructing flood-resistant roads, procuring vital medical supplies, and building a science laboratory in the village school. Before the lab was built, students traveled up to five kilometers to the neighboring village to conduct their science experiments. This resulted in low attendance, poor academic performance, and limited opportunities for postsecondary education.
A Crisis of Legitimacy
Blue carbon initiatives such as Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest clearly offer ecological and economic benefits. But the voluntary carbon market is relatively new and has been derisively described as the “Wild West” of climate-change solutions by experts such as Julia Jones, professor of conservation science at Bangor University. Critics allege that voluntary carbon credit markets have a propensity for collusion and that large-scale carbon credit schemes have been found guilty of greenwashing. Investigations conducted by The Guardian and Die Zeit, for example, found that many projects governed by the world’s largest global standard-setting organization, Verra, are likely to result in the sale of “phantom credits,” which do not represent genuine carbon reductions. As many as 90 percent of the most commonly traded offset credits, these investigations claim, may in fact be useless when it comes to mitigating the effects of climate change.
These findings have understandably prompted widespread skepticism about the quality of voluntary carbon credit schemes. “On the corporate side, there is enormous concern,” says Jan Mahrt-Smith, associate professor of finance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “Firms typically relied on Verra to assure that the credits are in fact accomplishing the carbon reductions as promised. Now, firms have mobilized resources to assure the validity of credits in-house, but firms who are unable to provide these assurances in-house are in a difficult position.”
Carbon credit projects have also been criticized for the high costs they can impose on poor and marginalized communities and the scant benefits that flow to them. Some projects have even generated human rights abuses. Journalists from The Guardian and Die Zeit visited a flagship Verra-certified offsetting project in Peru, where residents shared accounts of their homes being destroyed against their will in 2021.
To recover legitimacy, carbon credit projects must not only address concerns about their ineffectiveness in fighting climate change, but also show investors that they have the support of communities in which the projects are located, including assurances that they do not harm these communities and perhaps also commitments to bring additional benefits.
“More resources need to be attracted from private investors or companies to create revenue for the communities that goes beyond the solutions themselves,” says Kerry Max, deputy director of Partnering for Climate at Global Affairs Canada. “This includes figuring out how to use public funds to bring in private investment and helping communities tap into payment-for-ecosystem-services systems, like carbon or biodiversity credits, to generate extra income.”
“Truly resilient projects will require recognizing the value that maintaining buy-in at the local level has,” says Andrea Bassi, senior associate at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). “A key component is making sure projects are tied to other benefits beyond carbon. For example, benefiting to agro-revenue or benefiting local infrastructure.”
As a result of such concerns, project implementers are recontextualizing credits to reflect additional economic benefits, as well as to ensure that investments deliver sustainable development on the ground, alongside reducing emissions for the global good. “There is a cyclical trend year-on-year for carbon credits and how people feel about them,” says Becca Challis, a communications officer at IISD. “No communications around a project should entirely rely on carbon now.”
Mitigation Strategies
In response to such generalized concerns about carbon credit schemes, Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest have revealed an innovative, small-scale model that benefits their coastal ecosystems and delivers economic development to their communities. It is a model worth emulating and replicating at scale due to their focus on local cocreation and the generation of benefits to the villages. Accredited Plan Vivo Carbon Standard (PV Climate) projects must meet the minimum requirement of sending at least 60 percent of the income from credit sales to the community project committee. Annual reports provide transparency about the financial flows of the project.
The Three Pillar Approach | A diagram depicts the foundations of the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest initiatives. They support sustainable local development through mangrove conservation, local ownership, and carbon credit funds that underwrite infrastructure projects decided by the community. (Diagram courtesy of the Reach Alliance)
Villages involved in the two carbon credit initiatives have implemented effective conservation strategies to slow mangrove forest degradation. For example, VBF coordinators explained to us that to reduce mangrove harvesting for fuel, the villages adopted a fast-growing alternative wood source and explored the use of fuel-efficient cookstoves lined with clay to efficiently store heat as a more sustainable alternative to less-efficient open fires. By growing and harvesting ironwood (Casuarina equisetifolia), a fast-growing terrestrial species that sequesters much less carbon than mangrove trees, the village communities have been able to reduce their carbon footprint.
Villagers have also accelerated their mangrove forest-regeneration efforts by establishing nurseries for mangrove seedlings and designated planting areas. Collaborating with the government’s Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) and other international environmental scientists, villages are introducing innovative hydrological techniques to better support mangrove reforestation. Collaborative partnerships such as these have also enhanced local capacity, so that villagers can contribute directly and sustainably to forest management and implement reforestation and conservation techniques over the long term, leveraging their Indigenous knowledge and traditional practices with the land.
We consistently heard from experts in the field that the success of the two carbon credit schemes owes a great deal to their being designed, implemented, and maintained by the local communities.
“When I joined the university, I was the only person from my village reserves, and everyone knew me as ‘Mr. Mangrove’ because of my enthusiasm for answering questions about mangroves,” recalls Kassim Juma, Mikoko Pamoja’s current project coordinator. “My undergraduate project focused on both above- and below-ground biomass in Gazi. After finishing my undergraduate course in coastal and marine resource management, I volunteered a lot with KMFRI staff and intern students, which increased my passion for marine resources.”
Both Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest have generated enough resources to employ project coordinators, forest scouts, and a forest scholar program as the projects continue to grow and scale. As we walked along the planting sites, a village elder told us, “The forest scholars are knowledgeable; they are on track to inherit the project. Even the younger generation are involved. You can see pictures of what they think the forest is for—protection, conservation, fishing, and protecting from erosion.”
Alternative sources of income have been developed for community members who previously relied on mangrove trees for their economic livelihoods. Promoting eco-tourism, sustainable aquaculture practices, and the cultivation of mangrove-based products (such as honey cultivated from mangrove flowers) are contributing to alternative and additional sources of income for the communities. In one village, for example, a group of women raised funds to build a mangrove forest boardwalk, creating an accessible walking tour to introduce visitors to their forests, a promising eco-tourism entrepreneurial initiative.
The Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest projects are based on a 20-year strategy to verify the validity and value of the credits, outlined by global organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Carbon-saving efforts must be accurately measured and verified to ensure that the carbon storage is both real and permanent. Forest health and continued growth (e.g., tree height and trunk width) are measured several times annually by villagers themselves, according to international guidelines to estimate how much carbon is stored in the mangrove trees and soil.
The carbon credits generated by Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest are externally verified by a third-party organization every five years. Transparent third-party verification assures the market that the community has successfully (and measurably) implemented their conservation and reforestation plans. The comprehensive verification process includes an extensive review of planning documents at the outset, on-site forest visits, continual data analysis, and compliance assessments.
Plan Vivo, in turn, validates and approves the issuance of carbon credits to sell on global carbon markets each year. Importantly, all data are freely available on Plan Vivo’s website. African-based credit sellers we met in Kenya expressed confidence in the veracity and validity of ACES- and Plan Vivo-sponsored blue carbon initiatives, noting how Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest stand out when compared with other blue carbon schemes. Rather than promising community cocreation and transparency, they require it and are held to it by validators and third-party audits, the sellers noted.
Community-Led Solutions
The promise of the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest initiatives goes well beyond carbon reduction. They also offer a compelling model for community-centered approaches to sustainable development. We consistently heard from experts in the field that the success of the two carbon credit schemes owes a great deal to their being designed, implemented, and maintained by the local communities.
Hawkers from Vanga, Kiwegu, and Jimbo villages sell their goods, including freshly caught fish, woven baskets, and textiles, in Vanga’s central
village market. (Photo courtesy of the Reach Alliance)
“The challenge is establishing ownership,” experts at the United Nations Environment Programme told us. “If they think it belongs to external people, this might harm the sustainability.” This sentiment was echoed by experts at IISD. “In terms of global versus local initiatives, true resilience comes at a local level,” Bassi says.
As the primary users and caretakers of their surrounding mangrove forests, coastal communities play a crucial role in the conservation and reforestation of these ecosystems. Emphasizing local benefits is important for members of marginalized communities in the Global South, who, despite contributing the least to climate change, often experience its most severe consequences.
We cannot assume, however, that communities, especially those that are remote and with few resources, will conserve and sustain their natural ecosystems because of their ethical commitment to the environment alone. Despite the positive impacts these efforts have on the environment, systemically impoverished communities cannot be expected to take on climate change simply because it is the right thing to do—especially given the outsize carbon emissions and lack of remediation by affluent countries such as the United States. Protecting and restoring environmental resources like mangrove forests cannot be achieved by simply putting up a fence around them, especially in communities that rely on forests for their livelihoods.
In other words, sustainable practices require alignment with stakeholders’ needs, interests, and priorities. “I feel as like I am a bridge tackling the crisis of climate change,” says Mwanarusi Mwafrica, Vanga Blue Forest’s project coordinator. “I come from the coastal community here in Kenya, so I feel that sense of attachment to costal resources.”
Mangrove conservation and reforestation have significantly improved the quality of life for local villagers and supported community development in Gazi Bay and Vanga Bay. Feedback garnered through regular village meetings ensures local input in determining how the carbon credit revenues are to be spent on the community. While Gazi village chose to invest in clean-water projects, Jimbo village, in Vanga Bay, used funds generated from the sale of carbon credits to build the aforementioned science lab in the local school. When we visited the newly renovated classroom, we saw it equipped with fully kitted lab benches, Bunsen burners, and sinks with running water. Academic performance has significantly increased, and a village elder told us that “the village recently celebrated its first-ever science scholarship winner bound for university.”
Community control went beyond decisions about how to spend carbon credit revenues. The Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest projects deployed Kenya’s Community Forest Associations (CFAs) as the administrative mechanism to facilitate local engagement in the design and implementation of their blue carbon initiatives. CFAs are community-elected and -led committees with delineated rights and responsibilities to comanage the government-owned forests and forest resources alongside a project coordinator, a paid employee of the project who manages the day-to-day operations. CFAs comprise multiple local user groups responsible for various sustainable activities, including forest conservation, reforestation, harvesting, and beekeeping.
The Participatory Forest Management Plan, which is cocreated with villagers and the Kenya Forest Services (KFS), determines the roles and commitments of all stakeholders involved. Another important document is the Project Design Document, developed by ACES alongside the project partner organizations, including the CFA, KMFRI, and KFS. It details how community members design and manage these projects, including the rule that at least 60 percent of revenues from the sale of carbon credits go directly to community development.
Project coordinators are required to post the balance sheet (revenues and expenses) of the carbon credit initiatives publicly for all villagers to see. This process stipulates communities’ tenure rights to the project area, a formal recognition of the historical marginalization and dispossession of Indigenous lands and their communities.
Long-standing partnerships with government and academic institutions, such as KMFRI and Edinburgh Napier University, have developed local capacity through the introduction of best practices for mangrove conservation, reforestation, measurement, data collection, and monitoring. KMFRI has trained villagers in both sites to measure trunk diameter, collect soil samples, and nurture mangrove seedlings.
When we visited the reforested areas, a village CFA leader demonstrated to us reforestation techniques that had been implemented in what was earlier an abandoned salt flat. He explained that with the assistance of KMFRI, he and other villagers have adopted innovative hydrological techniques, such as building dikes and digging trenches, to promote mangrove growth far into the mainland. “Dykes slowly flush salt and increase the temperature, so over time it’s a more natural environment for mangroves,” the leader said. The once-barren area is now budding with mangrove seedlings.
Village elders use traditional forms of storytelling to emphasize the benefits of conservation with the rest of their communities. They describe how marine life thrives and how fish catches were once abundant thanks to a healthy mangrove ecosystem. They explain that “cutting the mangroves makes the fish go away.” In turn, the elders explain how the mangroves help the air: “Look at the people in Nairobi; they don’t breathe fresh air like us. Our mangroves provide us with good clean air, which keeps us healthy.”
A water tower was constructed bordering the residential and main street of Gazi village with funds provided from the Mikoko Pamoja initiative. (Photo courtesy of the Reach Alliance)
Adopting a community-based approach to the initial stages of project design, implementation, and equitable sharing of co-benefits fosters a powerful sense of ownership among villagers. “This project is ours; it belongs to the community … every villager is a member,” says Ali Salim Shufa, the chair of Mikoko Pamoja in 2019.
Replicating for Scale
Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest are powerful examples of successful, small-scale, climate-resilient development initiatives that have been designed, adapted, and sustained in remote coastal Kenyan villages. They have proven to be effective in managing mangrove forests, generating much-needed resources for development priorities, and building capacity within communities for long-term sustainability. In short, they ought to be scaled up and replicated.
But how can we scale up and replicate successful community-based interventions into other hard-to-reach places? Rather than thinking about scaling as the process of making “small” things into “big” things, Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest point us to consider how to efficiently replicate small initiatives that work, so that together, in aggregate, they have an outsized impact. Specifically, replicating for scale requires that local interventions be rooted, replicable, sustainable, and valuable to the communities.
First, the initiative must be rooted in the local community and reflect its specific circumstances and local context. Ensuring community ownership, whereby local villagers cocreate the initiative, participate as partners in its implementation, and work as key stakeholders in the project’s long-term sustainability, is critical to the success of Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest. Capacity-building has also ensured that villagers are able to implement and continually adapt their strategies to conserve their mangroves and generate income. “Mangrove conservation and restoration is not only a source of bread and butter to me but also a reflection of the effort of my own community and support from project partners that I picture a better tomorrow,” says Mwanarusi Mwafrica, Vanga Blue’s project coordinator.
As the villages in Gazi and Vanga demonstrate, local context matters a great deal. Villages rooted in the blue carbon initiative are better able to address their specific social and economic needs. Rooting a blue carbon project in another context—such as in villages that depend much more on mangrove harvesting—requires different considerations and conservation strategies.
Second, the core characteristics of the blue carbon projects have to be replicable across different settings. In an August 7, 2014, online article for this magazine, coauthors Joseph Wong, Stanley Zlotkin, Carmen Ho, and Nandita Perumal contended that despite the need for local customization in implementing an intervention, scaling requires identifying what they call the “replicable efficiency core.” In other words, scaling through replication does not require that local interventions be replicated in toto; rather, it requires replicating only the core mechanism of the solution, around which local considerations can be customized to suit the specific community.
In the cases of Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest, the replicable efficiency core is what we have identified as the virtuous cycle, whereby local efforts to conserve their mangroves generate carbon credit sales, which in turn earns the villages income to invest in their local development priorities. The specific ways in which this virtuous cycle can be achieved will vary among different communities (e.g., different conservation strategies, different reforestation strategies, different ecological ecosystems, and so on), but at their core, each community can replicate the main features of mangrove conservation, the sale of carbon credits, and the investment into local development and capacity-building.
Third, replicated interventions, such as small-scale blue carbon initiatives, need to be sustainable over the long term. To successfully scale up development solutions, communities require the capacity to maintain the initiatives, and they must benefit from their sustained efforts. Interventions cannot be scaled up to be short-term, unsustainable solutions.
For Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest, for instance, the long-term sustainability of the blue carbon projects has been achieved through capacity-building partnerships between the villagers and scientific experts. Both initiatives are supported by local community forest associations, and context-specific forest management plans also bode well for their long-term sustainability. Revenues that have been generated from the sale of carbon credits—and importantly, the long-term viability of global carbon credit markets responsible for these revenues—ensure that local villagers remain committed to sustainably managing their mangrove forests and their marine ecosystem more generally.
Finally, the promise of replicating for scale requires that initiatives continually add more and diversified value to local communities. The generation and delivery of important benefits in the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest initiatives—from improved fishing to alternative livelihoods to carbon credit income—demonstrate the value of these interventions to local communities. What’s more, the important roles played by the local community forest associations (CFAs) and other community-based organizations highlight values that go beyond simple mangrove management to community empowerment, ownership, and self-determination.
By developing and implementing local solutions to critical challenges, such as those in Gazi Bay and Vanga, remote coastal communities have created new community-led models for impact, expansive stakeholder networks, and more capacity to ensure that these initiatives remain durable over the long term. Often neglected, precisely because they are too small and too remote to scale, Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest exemplify what is possible and sustainable when hardest-to-reach communities are forced to create their own virtuous cycle of environmental protection, local economic development, and community ownership.
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