As you travel east from Port Elizabeth, which is now officially known as Gqeberha, into the Eastern Cape interior, the scenery changes in ways that are worth noticing. There are areas of land so damaged by decades of overgrazing that the soil has cracked into a grey crust that doesn’t hold water, doesn’t support crops, and hasn’t supported much of anything for a long time next to dense, ancient-looking stretches of thicket. From a moving car, the two can be distinguished from one another. What is hidden from view from the road is that some of that damaged land is now the site of silent but significant work that is gradually rebuilding the soil, removing carbon from the atmosphere, and paying wages in an area where jobs are actually hard to come by.
The Eastern Cape is about the size of Tunisia, covering an area of 169,000 square kilometers. It has a huge natural capacity to store carbon thanks to its rangelands, forests, coastal wetlands, and mountain ecosystems. Ten community-based nature-based carbon capture projects operating throughout the province were examined by researchers from Walter Sisulu University’s Centre for Global Change. They discovered something that climate policy discussions frequently discuss in theory but rarely show in practice: combating climate change and establishing rural livelihoods can occur on the same piece of land, at the same time, for the same people.
The numbers do not tell the whole story; they are just the beginning. It is estimated that carbon projects in the Eastern Cape will create about 27,600 direct jobs in environmental management, agriculture, ecological monitoring, and land restoration. About 1,000 jobs are being targeted by Spekboom restoration efforts alone. These jobs carry a weight that cannot be adequately represented in a line item in a province where the unemployment rate is roughly 42.5 percent, a figure that reflects a structural aspect of the local economy rather than a transient situation. Before these restoration projects started, some of the workers had no official jobs. Others had completely abandoned the land because there was no financial incentive to remain. They received one from the carbon market.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION TABLE — CARBON CAPTURE PROJECTS, EASTERN CAPE, SOUTH AFRICA
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Location Focus | Eastern Cape Province, South Africa — second largest province, 169,000 km² (size of Uruguay or Tunisia) |
| Research Institution | Walter Sisulu University — Centre for Global Change; researchers Simbarashe Ndhleve, Hlekani Kabiti, Leonard Chitongo |
| Number of Projects Studied | 10 community-based, nature-based carbon capture and storage projects |
| Projected Direct Jobs | ~27,600 direct jobs in land restoration, monitoring, agriculture, and ecological management |
| Spekboom Restoration Jobs | Spekboom (indigenous plant) restoration projects alone aimed at creating ~1,000 jobs |
| Eastern Cape Unemployment Rate | ~42.5% (recent estimates) |
| Key Projects | Amathole Forest Carbon Project, Kuzuko Thicket Restoration Project, Somerset East Restoration Project, Stutterheim Reforestation Project, Meat Naturally, AgriCarbon |
| Carbon Mechanism | Communities restore degraded land; buyers pay per unit of carbon captured or avoided; communities receive payments, jobs, and benefits |
| Environmental Benefits | Improved soil fertility, increased water retention, greater biodiversity, restored thickets and forests |
| AgriCarbon Model | Rewards farmers for climate-smart practices (e.g., no-till farming to keep carbon in soil) |
| Meat Naturally Model | Incentivizes farmers to restore communal rangelands used for grazing |
| Key Barrier 1 | Land tenure insecurity — much land is communal, held by state in trust, governed by traditional authorities |
| Key Barrier 2 | Poor roads, electricity, and digital connectivity hinder project implementation and carbon monitoring |
| Key Barrier 3 | Communities and local government lack familiarity with carbon markets |
| South Africa Context | One of the world’s most unequal societies; widespread rural poverty and limited economic opportunity |
It is worthwhile to comprehend Spekboom on its own. This native succulent, which grows in the Eastern Cape thicket biome, is unimpressive to look at. It is a small-leafed, grey-green shrub that doesn’t take great photos, but its ability to store carbon has drawn significant scientific interest. Restored spekboom thicket has the capacity to absorb several tons of carbon dioxide per hectare annually under the correct circumstances, drawing it down from the atmosphere and trapping it in the soil beneath it as well as the plant biomass. Among the initiatives channeling that capacity into carbon markets are the Kuzuko Thicket Restoration Project and the Somerset East restoration work. In these markets, verified units of sequestered carbon are sold to buyers, including corporations, governments, and voluntary purchasers, who pay for the storage service the restored land provides.
Although it operates differently, the AgriCarbon model shares a similar foundation. It encourages farmers to practice no-till agriculture, which keeps carbon contained in the soil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere by leaving the soil undisturbed after harvest instead of plowing it. Meat Naturally adopts a different approach by offering farmers incentives to manage communal rangelands in a more sustainable manner, thereby mitigating the overgrazing that has degraded a significant portion of the province’s rural land over the previous century. These various approaches deal with the same fundamental issue: land that was once an effective carbon sink has deteriorated into a source of emissions, but it can be restored with the correct assistance.
Seeing this play out in the Eastern Cape instead of a wealthy nation with robust rural infrastructure and deep capital markets is somewhat illuminating. These are not abstract policy issues. The province’s remote areas have such poor roads that transporting supplies and workers to project locations significantly raises costs. The supply of electricity is sporadic. There is insufficient digital connectivity, which is necessary for the data collection and verification that carbon markets demand. Signing the long-term contracts that carbon project developers require is genuinely challenging because a large portion of the land is communal, held in trust by the state, and governed by traditional authorities. On land to which they do not have official title, communities are being asked to sign a twenty-year stewardship agreement. That is not an inconvenience caused by bureaucracy. The demands of international carbon finance and the realities of South Africa’s post-apartheid land governance are fundamentally at odds.
The researchers discovered that communities were considerably more inclined to engage in and maintain carbon projects when they perceived immediate and observable livelihood benefits. This is perhaps the most practically significant finding. not assurances of upcoming payments. not revenues from carbon credits that are received following a two-year verification cycle. jobs that began at the beginning of the project. Wages are paid in months rather than years. The implication for designing carbon projects is straightforward: if you want long-term community involvement, the economic case must be clear and quick, independent of the workings of global carbon markets, which the majority of participants will never directly engage with.
As the global carbon market develops and faces pressure to show that it offers advantages beyond carbon accounting, it’s possible that the Eastern Cape model—community-based, nature-focused, and directly integrated with local employment—will be examined more closely in the years to come. The majority of the land with the greatest potential for restoration is located in the Global South. Additionally, the majority of rural poverty, unemployment, and the communities least accountable for the emissions these projects are intended to offset are found there. For reasons that go well beyond the boundaries of the province, it is important to get the design right in places like the Eastern Cape.
