Blue Carbon for African NGOs and Communities: From Mangrove Restoration to Carbon Finance

Description

Course Overview

Coastal wetlands store large amounts of carbon, protect shorelines and support fishing communities. Across Africa, NGOs and community groups are being asked to lead restoration and to engage with carbon markets, often without clear, trustworthy guidance. This course gives you that guidance in plain language, grounded in real projects on the Kenyan coast.

You will move from understanding blue carbon science, to restoring wetlands with communities, to assessing carbon markets, law and finance, and finally to planning your own project. Case studies from Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest show what worked and what was hard.

What makes this course different

• Africa-first examples, with Kenya's laws and institutions explained clearly and with pointers for other countries.
• Community rights and fair benefit sharing treated as central, not as an afterthought.
• Honest treatment of costs, delays and risks, with checkpoints and a final assessment.

Each lesson includes key ideas, an African example and a practice activity, so you finish with a project roadmap you can use.

What will you learn

• Explain what blue carbon is and why mangroves, seagrass and salt marshes store so much carbon, especially in the soil.

• Describe how carbon is measured, convert between carbon and carbon dioxide equivalent and read uncertainty honestly.

• Decide between planting, assisted natural recovery and protection for a degraded wetland site.

• Design community consent, governance and benefit-sharing processes that are fair and transparent.

• Explain how carbon credits, standards, additionality, permanence and leakage work in plain language.

• Compare the Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest projects and extract lessons for new projects.

• Navigate the main Kenyan laws and institutions for mangrove carbon projects and know what to check in other countries.

• Build a cautious project budget and a twelve-month action plan with partners and funders.

Requirements

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