One Carbon World: “Partnerships are key to develop and scale African carbon markets”
Exclusive interview with Madeleine Garlick, One Carbon World Africa Director. One Carbon World is the official climate impact partner of the upcoming Carbon Markets Africa Summit.
Madeleine Garlick, One Carbon World Africa Director, One Carbon World
Interview summary: This interview with Madeleine Garlick, Africa Director at One Carbon World (OCW), explores the organisation's approach to supporting African businesses and communities on the path to net zero, the state of African carbon markets, and the importance of robust data systems and partnerships.
Key points:
OCW’s Mission and Approach: OCW is a not-for-profit dedicated to helping organisations reduce their carbon footprint and achieve recognised standards such as the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). They provide tailored guidance to clients and advocate for putting high-quality data in front of decision-makers.
African Carbon Markets: Garlick sees the African carbon market as vibrant and growing, with strong demand for high-quality, nature-based carbon credits. However, she notes the need for better regulatory alignment across African countries to foster trust, investment, and value retention locally.
Importance of MRV (Measurement, Reporting, and Verification): Garlick emphasises that reliable MRV systems are crucial for market integrity and scale. Accurate, locally relevant data empowers communities and companies, informs better decisions, and ensures climate claims are credible. She highlights data inequality and calls for greater investment in African scientific and data infrastructure.
Local Value and Investment: The interview stresses the need for frameworks that enable African ownership and value retention from carbon projects, including domestic financing mechanisms. Garlick mentions successful partnerships between governments, such as the Coalition to Grow Carbon Markets, as positive steps.
Community and Women’s Roles: OCW works directly with communities, training farmers in soil data collection and promoting women’s involvement in climate action. Garlick believes women are key to an equitable and effective climate transition.
Challenges and Opportunities: Common challenges include data availability and the cost of green investments. Opportunities lie in seeing sustainability as a driver of business security and broader success.
Q. Tell us about One Carbon World, your position in the climate landscape, and your role.
One Carbon World is a not-for-profit organisation committed to supporting companies and businesses on their low carbon journey. We believe action to tackle climate change has the potential to also support social and environmental goods and help communities. We began our life supporting businesses on their low carbon journey by measuring, reducing and rebalancing their carbon footprint. This included advice, guidance to organisations on how to set tailored targets, particularly through the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). We believe companies should be doing everything they can, big or small, to start their low-carbon journey. For some companies, this takes time, but we believe every step is a good one.
We have recently begun expanding our work into nature-based solutions projects in the carbon market. This is very much in response to what our customers have been asking for, which is high integrity carbon credits to support their low carbon journey. We particularly support our customers and clients and projects through the MRV process- Monitoring, Reporting and Verification - to ensure that their process, their activities are high integrity and comply with all the relevant data and global verification requirements.
Unfortunately, we believe that carbon markets are a key part of the climate journey for a number of organisations. Finally, we are a UNFCCC observer organisation. For us, this is really important because it gives us an opportunity to profile and support best practice from around the world. And we're delighted to be able to do this to encourage and incentivise a better carbon market.
Q. What is your assessment of the current state of African carbon markets, especially on the nature-based solutions side?
We believe that the global carbon markets are at an inflection point. We have seen all of the forecasts about the potential scale of the market, and some pretty bombastic estimates about the cost of carbon in 2050. And so whilst we believe that these markets will grow, what most people don't know is the scale and pace and geographical spread of how the markets will expand.
Some have said that there is a dampening of demand in the African carbon market. We think exactly the opposite.
In the financial services sector, there is a saying which is that “a volatile market is a vibrant market and one filled with vitality”. And we think that this rings pretty true for the African carbon market.
The MSCI Sustainability Institute, who produces guidance and research on the carbon markets, have come up with a pretty compelling statistic, which is that the commitments to purchase [credits from] high-quality nature-based solutions projects in the first half of 2025 has tripled in comparison to the first half of 2024.
Their assessment shows to me that demand is hot, particularly for high integrity credits, which is fantastic because they're saying that a lot of these credits are selling at around about the $50 a tonne mark. And for us, where we believe that high integrity projects and credits are the sweet spot and where we should all be aiming, this is a really, really positive sign at the moment.
However, when we look across the African picture, it is very different. Different African countries are at a different point in their journey of understanding and taking advantage of the carbon markets globally, whether that is the VCM (working through voluntary systems) or the Article 6 arrangements that are in place. Some African countries are really just beginning to dip their toe into the carbon markets, whereas others are, frankly, global leaders through articulating robust, transparent frameworks at the national level, whether that's for Article 6 or the voluntary market. So it is patchy, but there is definitely a development of the sector overall in a positive direction.
The key question, I think, for the next 5 to 10 years is whether these regulatory environments can grow in a way that continues to ensure external investment is facilitated, and that we don't see barriers to the engagement of external finance into these national carbon markets.
We welcome strong regulation. Regulation helps build trust in all the stakeholders that are needed in the carbon market. So that is trust from communities that their wishes will be honoured and respected. It's trust from project developers that it is worth their time and their investment in engaging in the market . And trusts also from buyers and ‘consumers’ of carbon credits that when they make commitments financially those commitments will be honoured. So we believe that the key element of a regulatory framework needs to be building this trust.
What we would like to also see more of- which I think is really critical for scale in the carbon market- is sharing between different countries on how they are developing their jurisdictions. So particularly on nature-based solutions, if you want to achieve large landscape level change, you need frameworks across countries, and neighbouring countries that allows for trans-boundary work to happen. And that also reflects the realities of the ecosystem in which we are working too.
The places where we need to do more of this kind of exchange are very exciting. We have the Carbon Markets Africa Summit coming up in Johannesburg in October, CMAS. We also have in a couple of weeks’ time the really important second Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa. And these are places where buyers, consumers, project developers, countries, communities, NGOs can get together and exchange notes and learn from each other, which we think is really important at this point in the market.
One final element that we would really like to see is an increase in domestic resource mobilisation into the carbon markets. So this is happening in some places. South Africa is a very good example, thanks to the role of the JSE, the stock exchange, but also [due to] the domestic regulatory framework. This is incentivising domestic institutions and domestic financial institutions to invest in the market. And this is a really helpful supplementary financial flow, alongside external investment into the development of the markets.
Q. Can you tell us about the importance of MRV in ensuring high integrity and scale?
So One Carbon World at our heart is an MRV institution. We believe that data is power. It's power for communities. It's power for the market. It's power for CEOs and boardrooms to understand what is happening in their business. It's easy to think that in our modern interconnected world, where AI can answer a question for you in moments, any question, that the importance of data science is diminishing, but that simply isn't the case in the climate age context, particularly because AI has not yet grasped the nuances and sophisticated dynamic nature of a number of the ecosystems in which we are working on nature-based solutions projects.
I'll just give you one example. We are working with clients in Africa to understand the impacts of the carbon in avocado plantations, which are really dynamic and interesting ecosystems. And when we have done some of our statistical analysis of what is happening in those avocado plantations, unfortunately, if you asked AI, they would give you answers based on data generated in other parts of the world, but not in Africa, so from Australia, South America, etc. Now that is helpful, but what does that really tell you about what is going on in a really complicated ecosystem in central Kenya or in Southern Africa? Not much. What you still need ultimately is people, scientists, agronomists, farmers, labourers and smallholder communities to be out there in the ecosystem, on the farm, taking measurements and explaining what is happening in these really dynamic ecosystems year on year.
Our companies understand this and they know that if you don't understand what is happening with your carbon, then you don't really understand what is happening with your farm, your soil or your community. Carbon data is essentially, management data now. And so, for some companies having this data might mean they decide to do more in-setting within their own value chain, or they might decide that actually the best way to realise the value of this carbon is through a nature-based solution intervention, which also has the benefit of diversifying revenue streams for businesses and communities. Again, without this data, year on year, people would struggle to make these decisions in an informed way.
Ultimately, MRV is essential for assuring robust removals and emissions reductions, that they are quantifiable, additional, permanent and that they avoid leakage so that we're all doing what we say we are doing. MRV is about ensuring that claims are verified. If you don't have this kind of confidence in the market, then you'll never achieve scale in the nature-based solution space. MRV is the source of investable credits ultimately.
And for us, that's also why it's really important that we see sophisticated project design taking account of MRV from the beginning of the project cycle so that we are taking advantage of the data from the very first day that we begin.
We are worried a little about one of the barriers to scale, which is that there still remains a lack of really, really consistently high-quality data in the African carbon markets. African scientific institutions are doing their best to help fill this gap and they are really, really committed to doing so. For example, many African universities and research institutions are developing allometric equations for key species, but ultimately there is still insufficient data in the global system around some of these ecosystems. And we would like to see the global verification schemes and VVBs working a little bit harder to try and work with scientific institutions to fill evidence gaps and build a robust and healthy African science base for the future.
Q. Please talk about your work with businesses in Africa to harness the power of land to tackle climate change. How are they leading by example?
So I think the best example to talk about here is a company we're very proud on working with. We worked with a large vegetable grower, processor and exporter in East Africa since 2021. They have an incredibly strong commitment to sustainability at their core. And in 2021, we worked with them to produce their first carbon inventory for Scopes 1, 2 and 3 emissions.
Our aim was to establish the 2021 baseline to underpin their ambitious target, which was to achieve net zero operational emissions for Scope 1 and 2 by 2025. This first inventory, which we produced alongside the company, provided the organisation with critical data that allowed them to adjust their operational footprint to meet their targets. They decided to build a new factory and in this factory invested in huge amounts of exciting renewables technology from a biomass boiler to solar panels and continued energy efficiency measures as well. And as a result of this investment and commitment, they were able to reduce their scope one and two emissions by 80 % against the 2021 baseline. And in fact, the factory in which they built has won a really impressive IFC Edge certification award, which is one of the first in East Africa.
But the beauty of this inventory process, is that really it gave the company huge amounts of data for other areas of their operations. So whether it was waste or water, or giving them data on their suppliers to have really robust conversations about procurement and supplier contracts in the future. So this was just the start of their ability to innovate and grow along their green journey.
We are now also working with them to do a really exciting carbon removals inventory to assess the existing removals potential and realities on their land, which is going to be really exciting to see if we can move forward into some nature-based solutions as well.
Q. What are the main challenges in your view? And the opportunities?
So I think one of the key challenges we see, whether it is working with businesses or projects, is having the data you need readily available. So for businesses, this is sometimes because the sustainability teams don't necessarily have control over the areas of the business where the data is generated. Sometimes for businesses, they've simply never collected this kind of data before.
And so we work very closely with businesses to try and find easy ways for them to build their own internal evidence-base and data collection processes. This is really a living embodiment of the idea of sustainability being a whole of business endeavour.
The other challenge we sometimes see is that when you do an inventory for a business, they do identify some upfront investment that needs to be made into new technologies. Again, this can be difficult to sell internally to stakeholders. But the beauty of the inventory is you are also gathering data on the “dirty” parts of the business and how much they are costing you. And so when you pitch to the board or the CEO, you can weigh up the upfront investment on new technology against the costs you are incurring from the dirty technology. And invariably, if you can present this as an investment that will pay off in years two, three, four and five we see companies taking that step and moving forward, which is fantastic.
The opportunity here really is to be at the cutting edge of climate innovation. And a number of the businesses we work with are excited to be market leaders and want to take these steps. And they’ve realised that actually it's not really about a profit loss calculation, but taking steps towards green innovation and adopting green technologies actually helps you manage the risk to your business in the longer term, whether these are risks from supply, risks from energy security, or frankly, risks from the consumer market that no longer accepts companies who aren't starting their green journey. So it really helps you secure your customer base and your supplier base for the future.
Q. You are the official climate impact partner of the upcoming Carbon Markets Africa Summit. Why the decision to join this climate change journey with VUKA Group?
So we are very, very proud to be working with the VUKA group and have been selected as their Climate Impact partner for the CMAS Summit. We will be measuring the carbon footprint of the CMAS Summit in October in Johannesburg with VUKA. VUKA believes in leading by example, which includes setting high standards for themselves.
While they've already begun to work in this area, we are really happy that we can take this forward and deepen the commitment through a bespoke carbon footprint for their event. Our partnership, we hope, will enable VUKA to gather huge amounts of data to understand the impacts of their summits. And we were excited to work with them to talk about how we can then reduce some of those emissions and set some targets to do that.
By working together, we hope to be able to track year-on-year improvements. It is a journey. And we think that this is a really, powerful move by an organisation who are not only hosting the critical green conversations that we need about Africa's future, but are also leading the way by walking the walk themselves.
Q. What will be your message at the event?
Our key message at this event is that Africa is leading and that Africa doesn't need the outside world to tell them to do that. African stakeholders and innovators are developing and leading the market at the moment. And that the most important thing at this point in the progress and development of the African carbon market is partnership. Partnerships between businesses, partnership between project implementers to learn from each other, partnerships with communities, finding new ways to deliver value at the grassroots level. Partnership is the way we will get scale out of the African carbon market and ensure it is delivering for everybody.
Q. Women's month is celebrated in South Africa in Aug and on 31 July we celebrated Africa Women's Day. How important is the role of women in the continent's climate change journey?
Women's Day is a really, really important day to celebrate in South Africa. We need to continue to honour our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives and friends for the amazing contribution that women have made in South Africa against huge hardship and against deep struggles in the past. And some still continue to struggle to make end meet to support their families. We know that women throughout the continent are underutilised and underrepresented in decision-making structures and in power centres. And this is no different in the climate space. But what we do have is a group of vocal and exciting women at the grassroots level from across the continent who are making their voices heard, building on the legacy of Wangari Maathai from Kenya in the 90s. And I'm delighted to celebrate women's contribution on climate change this month and this day. Thank you.