In an effort to attract fresh investment in the country’s carbon market and to provide clarity and certainty, Zimbabwe’s President published new Carbon Trading Regulations on 2 May. The regulations establish the Zimbabwe Carbon Markets Authority, a registry, and a grievance mechanism for affected stakeholders and communities. It also imposes a series of eligibility requirements for carbon projects in the country, including meeting certain financial and technical capacity standards, a local legal presence and a duty to disclose key project data. Moving away from controversial project revenue share requirements in previous versions of the regulations, the current version includes a smaller set of “mandatory deductions, [and] reservations” such as an automatic return of 1% of verified emission reductions for the NDC, crediting 2% of verified reductions to the National Buffer Account, and “credit[ing] 30% of all verified emissions reductions to the National Transaction Account (NTA) as payment of the Share of Proceeds”. The regulations also deal with formalities to participate in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Soon thereafter the President launched the national carbon registry in Harare, which commenced with an inter-registry transfer of 10,000 carbon credits from Gold Standard’s registry to Zimbabwe’s ZCR, related to a project developed by local firm Cicada.
