A historic partnership between South Africa’s Peace Parks Foundation (PPF) and Zambia’s Biocarbon Partners (BCP) is securing the future of Zambian forests and the wildlife that relies on them for survival.

It is a sobering thought that Zambia loses forests four times the size of New York City to deforestation every year, with an average 300 000ha of trees and valuable wildlife habitat disappearing due to charcoal production and agricultural clearing.

The African conservation collaboration is saving the continent’s most vital wildlife habitat areas by harnessing the income generation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) carbon offsets. These carbon offsets are then sold, which in turn fund forest protection and community development.

“Conservation efforts can only be successful if they also engage and benefit those communities who are engrained in these natural spaces. The income generated from REDD+ projects elevates the intrinsic value of conservation to a tangible return back to people and planet.  With this in mind, our goal is to jointly develop more than ten million hectares of high-quality REDD+ projects in transfrontier conservation areas and other areas of global biodiversity importance, over the next decade,” says Werner Myburgh, CEO of Peace Parks Foundation.

To incentivise support of, and participation in, forest conservation, rural communities receive performance-based incentives that can be used to fund local infrastructure and social development projects.

From a tourism perspective, Sarah Millar, Communications and Marketing Specialist of BCP, says the primary benefit for tourism operators is the protection of the habitat and wildlife that makes the Luangwa-Lower Zambezi ecosystem such a draw card. “It is worth noting that, aside from Zambian tourism, the land areas protected by this partnership form the primary wildlife migration corridor for Malawi-Zambia-Zimbabwe-Mozambique, thereby securing their tourism sectors as well. We have a growing list of tourism operators and lodges going carbon-neutral through purchases of our REDD+ offsets, based throughout the Luangwa-Lower Zambezi ecosystem. Some pay for the offsets out of their own budgets, some request that their clients pay a small additional levy for their visit to cover the costs,” adds Millar.

She says the work has an impact on the local tourism industry through its effect on their attitudes towards eco-tourism and carbon neutrality. “To-date, our primary support in Zambia has been offset purchases by the local tourism industry. In 2016, tourism operators in Lower Zambezi National Park came together to share the costs of making the Park the world’s first carbon-neutral from operations. This year, a tourism operator in Luembe National Park took that one step further and purchased offsets to make that National Park entirely carbon-neutral, offsetting even the international and national flights for tourists who entered the park. In doing so it became the most carbon-neutral park in the world.

“It is our sincere hope that the encouraging support we have received from tourism operators to  date will continue to grow, raising the profile of conservation efforts by the tourism sector here in Zambia and also raising awareness among visitors of the need to approach tourism in an eco-friendly way. We are experiencing a positive trend here, and some of our supporters you could consider leaders in eco-tourism through forest carbon offsets,” concludes Millar.