Investigating the viability of carbon financing for climate smart agriculture for a small holder farming in western Kenya

Abstract

AbstractIn the recent past, climate change has been a big problem in the world causing a lot of disaster. The world has adopted a system of reducing the greenhouse gases (GHG) through mitigation aspects and a reward given to those able to reduce their emission below the set caps through a system known as carbon financing. This study sought to investigate whether Carbon financing through implementation of climate smart agriculture practices would help solve food insecurity challenges in poor and developing countries through adaptation of climate smart agriculture. Climate smart agriculture is an agriculture strategy that helps farmers adapt to climate change and simultaneously reduce greenhouse gas emissions or sequester carbon while sustainably increasing agricultural productivity hence food security. The carbon models to help understand the ex-ante sink from agroforestry system which l determined how much would be paid to the farmers was developed from above and below ground tree biomass from the two agroforestry trees of Causorinas and Gravillea robusta. This two tree species were selected because they were the most popular with the communities. The biomass baseline within the research area was determined from landsat images of the last 15 years which was again affirmed by ground truthing. This baseline carbon was finally deducted from the created sink as the afforestation reafforestation Clean Development mechanism (CDM) methodology requires. Verified carbon standards (VCS) methodologies borrow quite heavily from CDM methodologies reason why you will keep noticing references to CDM. Carbon prices were also determined from the carbon market trends. The net revenue from carbon was determined by multiplying carbon dioxide figures by carbon price less the cost of implementing these activities. The study showed that around 7000ha of land must be planted with both or either of the agroforestry trees in the same year for the climate smart agriculture to be viable at a carbon price of USD6/TCO2-eq after year 10. This will only be able to meet the cost of implementation but will not include any payment to the farmer. If any payment to the farmers is required then more than 7000ha of land needs to be covered in this programme. The data also showed that carbon finance alone was not enough to make climate smart agriculture sustainable. There will be need for other sources of funding especially climate funds. But since this programme focus on both adaptation and mitigation then there was need to consider both adaptation and mitigation funds to finance this kind of activities