Carbon Offset Project Exclosure - North Gondar, Phase Two

The Carbon Offset Project Exclosure - North Gondar (COPE) in Ethiopia was the first project selected by the BOKU carbon compensation system (BOKU-CO2) founded in 2012. COPE and COPE 2.0 is implemented by the Centre for Development Research (CDR) at BOKU in cooperation with the Gondar Agricultural Research Centre (GARC) in Ethiopia. COPE started in 2013 with a multi-staged participatory process over 18 months in two villages in Northern Ethiopia. When designing the participatory process, local customs and traditions were used as a baseline for the design. Therefore, the process was then based on a series of village meetings, and the establishment of committees and sub-groups working on specific issues in-between the larger meetings. Plantations were since done annually depending on the demand jointly identified by the local forest committee (FC) and Gondar Agriculture Research Centre researchers. The villagers have increased the originally planned area of 30 ha to 79,5 ha in 2017. The permanence of the afforestation, the first 10.000 seedlings were planted in June 2015, can now be secured by a broad acceptance of the project by the land users. During the 4 years monitoring period (2013/2016) 1320 tons of CO2 had been sequestered. The core objective of COPE 2.0 is to establish long term, innovative and participatory climate mitigation project which is planned, funded, implemented and supported in Ethiopia where BOKU scientists had been involved in the area through joint research projects already prior to project intervention. The goal of COPE 2.0 mitigation projects is not only climate protection, but also the structural and sustainable change in the area through the cooperation of science and local population to develop comprehensive climate programs and which have varied positive benefits such as biodiversity, water and soil protection, gender equality, participation, education and training as well as entrepreneurship opportunities for the local economy.