| Abstract: | Global Carbon markets with international carbon offset have been designed to
channel carbon finance for climate change management to poor and developing
countries. In the voluntary carbon markets, companies, governments, and
individuals voluntarily spent just under $4.5 billion on conservation and clean
energy over the past decade by purchasing nearly 1 billion carbon offsets. This
review paper has targets of assessing the level of carbon trading, opportunities and
challenges in carbon trading in Africa and suggesting possible remedial ideas for
problems related to raised issues. The level of carbon emission from African
countries is very low as compared with western and some Asian countries. In
carbon markets, buyers and sellers trade in ‘carbon offsets’ or ‘carbon credits’
which are units of carbon emissions reduced at source. Broadly, these markets
consist of two types of transactions called project-based transactions and trade in
emission allowance. In Africa, a local carbon emissions trading system could
create a system that is more flexible, encourage local investment projects, craft
transparency and generate trading volumes. There are challenges in carbon
trading in Africa, among these, uncertainty in the flow of benefit potential and high
transaction costs are cited as the two major limitations. The revenue collected from
the sale of carbon should be shared among countries particularly which have a
good courage as well as motives of conserving forest resources. Project
implementation capacity of African must be boosted by creating different
opportunities of skills development. |
