Lion Carbon
Making forests and wildlife more valuable to local people
Lion Carbon is a premium carbon offset developed by BioCarbon Partners (BCP) in partnership with Lion Landscapes.
Lion Carbon's mission is to make biodiversity, including large carnivores like lion, leopard and spotted hyena, valuable to local communities, and increase their capacity to sustainably manage that biodiversity.
How Lion Carbon works
Sustainable income for local communities, linked to the conservation of their forests and wildlife, is generated through the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism. At the same time, local and regional capacity to sustainably manage wildlife and forests is increased through proper management planning, anti-poaching, and monitoring.
The BCP REDD+ Model for Lion Carbon
BioCarbon Partner's REDD+ Projects Impacts
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224,622 community beneficiaries across 13 chiefdoms in Lusaka and Eastern Province.
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Directly impacting 37,437 households.
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105 Community Scouts, achieving an average of 10,000 man-days per year, trained, equipped and supported to enhance resource protection, in partnership with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife.
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Supporting 251 Lead Farmers and 6,275 Follow Farmers, who are leading the way in conservation farming. Using Climate-Smart farming methods is key to reduce unsustainable farming methods that result in wildlife habitat loss
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533,924,184 trees across almost 1 million hectares of forest protected.
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Over US$4.3 million in direct payments made to 12 chiefdoms through revenue generated from Forest Carbon Fees in 2020-21.
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1,4 million tons of emissions reduced annually which is the equivalent of removing 290,000 cars from the road.
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US$114,000 invested into the Forestry Department and Department of National Parks and Wildlife's resource protection and community engagement activities in 2020.
To create landscapes that support people and lions you have to think BIG
With almost 1,000,000 hectares of prime wildlife habitat included in the BCP REDD+ projects, we are working to create one of the largest biodiversity corridors in Africa:
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Connecting four Key Landscapes for Conservation; and
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Securing one of the last 6 remaining lion legacy landscapes on the planet.
Lions are a flagship species for conservation success in Africa; their presence indicative of healthy, biodiverse ecosystems.
For lions to survive, wildlife rich ecosystems must be more valuable than alternate land uses to local people and governments.
Why Choose Lion Carbon?
In addition to the impacts listed above, revenue from Lion Carbon supports 3 pillars of community-based activities, that ensure a future for wildlife in REDD+ forests:
1.
Security
Protect existing wildlife biodiversity through anti-poaching activities
2.
Regeneration
Increase wildlife biodiversity through active reintroductions
3.
Monitoring
To inform the adaptive management of all wildlife conservation efforts
This short video shows the incredible community benefits of BCP carbon offsets.
Lion Carbon Funding
Community and government agreements and the mechanisms to manage all REDD+ forest carbon operations have already been developed by the BCP team through a US$14 million USAID Community Forests Program grant given in 2014. This includes the verification and sale of REDD+ forest carbon offsets and mechanisms for the distribution of income from these sales to local communities.
Direct lion conservation activities are currently supported by The Lion Recovery Fund, Darwin Initiative, Nat Geo’s Big Cat Initiative and Disney. They will be increasingly matched and then exceeded by funds generated from the sale of REDD+ Carbon Offsets as part of this project, until operations are entirely self-sustaining.
