The Climate Change Project Generates Carbon Credits
In 2007, we launched a Climate Change Project in tandem with New Perimeter, DLA Piper’s nonprofit affiliate dedicated to providing pro bono legal support for projects of global concern. Launched as part of our Global Sustainability Initiative, the Climate Change Project was designed to enable small groups of subsistence farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to generate carbon credits through afforestation and reforestation – essentially transforming bare land into lush groves. These carbon credits can be sold to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The result, expected to be realized over several years, will be to reduce the devastating effects of deforestation, drought and famine in these poverty-stricken areas while providing long-term revenue for the participating small groups of farmers through the sale of greenhouse gas credits.
For the second half of the project, we provided a range of legal services to subsistence farmers in coordination with the International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST) and the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center. We reviewed the legal issues facing the subsistence farmers, including land tenure and ownership, organizational structures and the contracts needed to create and protect the rights of farmers generating and selling carbon credits to global customers. Next, we researched all of the applicable statutes and regulations in the three countries and identified the relevant issues regarding ownership of land, trees and carbon credits. We then worked directly with the farmers in two African countries to understand the demands and circumstances of their work and help secure an organizational structure that would meet their needs as well as satisfy the requirements of international carbon credit protocols.