TransparenC: Bringing Carbon Projects to Life

About the
Project

The mangrove restoration project in the Aceh Timur Regency covers over 4,600 hectares of degraded forest, heavily impacted by the aquaculture industry. The existing land cover of the project site is dominated by fishponds (91% of the total project area), with bare ground and wet shrubs making up the remaining balance. The project area was originally a mangrove forest, but it gradually degraded with the introduction of shrimp ponds and logging for charcoal production. Today, many of the shrimp ponds have been abandoned given they are no longer financially viable. This has caused detrimental impact to the local community as the aquaculture industry is the primary source of income.

The project proponent has obtained the necessary social forestry management license from the central government for 35 years.

The Aceh mangrove project aims to restore the mangrove forest over a 30-year period, employing a multi-pronged rehabilitation strategy: 50% of the fishponds will be restored to mangrove forests, while 50% will be transformed into silvofisheries. The project aims to sequester 1,232,797 tons CO2e over the project period.

Emission Impact

Quantification of Emissions

High-integrity carbon credits are those that are robustly and conservatively quantified. We not only visualize projected emissions impact but also assess and validate the carbon stocks of projects throughout their lifetime. Our integrity check leverages reference site analyses to provide robust quantification and assurance that each credit issuance represents at least one metric ton of carbon.

Additionality

Carbon projects are additional if they would not have occurred in the absence of carbon credit generation. On the flip side, projects are not additional if the carbon avoidance or removal would have occurred in the status-quo ‘business as usual’ scenario. We test the additionality resilience of projects by using geospatial analyses and remote sensing capabilities to evaluate dynamic baseline scenarios.

Permanence

Permanence refers to how long the carbon dioxide removed or avoided will be kept out of the atmosphere. Permanence risk is when storage reversal occurs before the planned duration of storage (e.g. 50 years) is up. We monitor the project area for unforeseen disruptions and identify permanence risks by modelling the threat of adverse weather conditions.

Co-Benefits

The Project Area, covering 15 villages in 4 sub-districts and 96,813 fishing communities, aims to empower local communities. With the plan to restore inactive shrimp ponds and convert conventional active shrimp ponds into silvofisheries, the project is essential for not only ecosystem restoration, erosion prevention, and disaster risk reduction but also improving the economic well-being of the community.

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