Former president Jacob Zuma with a carbon credits cheque on behalf of the Africa Belarus Trade Organisation. Supplied: JZ FoundationA carbon registry and exchange that planned to launch in Zimbabwe next month has thrown the fate of two million Russian offsets that a Belarusian trade associate said it would list on the exchange into doubt.
The Africa Voluntary Carbon Credits Market will only trade offsets originating on the continent, it said in a statement. At a conference this month former South African President Jacob Zuma, representing the Belarus African Foreign Trade Association, BAFTA, announced that credits secured by the association would kick-start trade on the bourse. Belarusian government officials later confirmed those credits were from a Siberian forestry project.
The exchange will"only trade on its platform carbon credits coming from countries in the African continent and not any other jurisdiction," Kwanele Hlabangana, AVCCM’s chairman, said in a statement on Tuesday. He didn’t refer Zuma’s announcement other than to say foreign media had"sought to draw our organization into geopolitical issues."