Kenya launches carbon credits project

Kenya launches carbon credits project
Ugonma Cokey, Germany

Kenya has launched a project, combining both global position system technology and Google servers for data uploads and storage.

The project could see earnings from carbon credits used to fight diarrhea, pneumonia and typhoid, common killers of thousands of African children every year.

The Clinical Officer at Bumula District hospital in Bungoma County, Western Kenya Robert Magomere, says, the diarrhea alone is second leading killer of children in the area after malaria.

Carbon for water initiative

The program, called “Carbon for Water” and spearheaded by Vestergaard Frandsen, a Europeran company that has had a history of doing community health projects in the area, is the first project that will address health, forest conservation and greenhouse gas emission reduction.

The project will provide point-of-use water filtration for Kenyan residents for at least 10 years and do so without any cost to local residents, governmental agencies or donor groups.

The province-wide, door-to-door, free distribution of 900,000 straws for sieving water will last almost six weeks and reach about 90 percent of all homes without access to safe municipal water sources.

Normally, residents used firewood to boil water for drinking and in the process inflict themselves with respiratory infections from the indoor pollution as a result of smoke.

The process of doing this has long term effect on forest cover.

How it works   

This unique funding model gives companies in developed countries potential revenue, in the form of carbon credits, for sponsoring programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.

Carbon credits can then be sold to carbon credit buyers that want to reduce their carbon footprint or improve their environmental stewardship. Already, Vestergaard Frandsen has a commitment from the JP Morgan bank of the US on buying offered carbon credits.

The revenue generated will largely be reinvested into the project to make it sustainable for at least ten years. 

Vestergaard Frandsen worked in collaboration with the social enterprise Manna Energy Ltd. to develop and bring the program and carbon offset project to fruition. 

Value added

Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen sees his project offering a correction to the imbalance that exists in the global carbon market besides helping combating disease and insures environmental sustainability by reducing use of wood and other fuel for cooking fires and removing tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

To help realize this objectivet, Vestergaard Frandsen has employed 4,000 community health workers, an equal number of drivers to help distribute the filters and 400 supervisors.

The company also received ongoing collaborative support from the United Nations Development Programme. 

In February 2011, after a rigorous validation process by the DNV of Oslo, a UNFCCC prequalified Validation Company on carbon trading; the program was approved as a voluntary project under the prestigious Gold Standard certification scheme. 

DNV will also be the firm that will be doing validation every six months.

To date, 1,039 projects have earned a total of more than 600 million certified emission reduction credits.

Qasim