Three months after Zimbabwe roiled the $2 billion carbon credit market by suddenly canceling projects and claiming half of all proceeds, the country now says it will accept a smaller share of revenue and has begun the process of reinstating scrapped projects. In revised regulations issued Friday, the government said projects had 60 days to reapply for reinstatement and it would now keep 30% of proceeds in the form of an environment levy for the first 10 years of their operation.
The country’s biggest project is in the northern area of Kariba, covering a 785,000 hectare swath of forest and is overseen in part by South Pole, the world’s leading seller of offsets. Of the environmental levy taken by the government, 55% will go toward climate mitigation and adaptation projects, 5% will be retained for a so-called loss-and-damage fund to compensate for climate-related disasters.