Ghana planning to regulate carbon credits industry
Ghana is working on legislation to regulate the production of carbon credits at sites in the country, Lands and Natural Resources Minister Samuel Jinapor said.
The move follows steps taken others on the continent from Zimbabwe to Kenya to implement laws to ensure that both the government and local communities get a greater share of benefits from the production of offsets, with most of the money earned to date having flowed out of the nations.
The African Union, in a declaration at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, committed to “implementing a mix of measures that elevate Africa’s share of carbon markets.”
“We need a proper framework, legislation policy to regulate the carbon market of Ghana,”Jinapor said in an interview in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, on the sidelines of the summit. “We are in the process of doing so.”
A single carbon credit represents a ton of climate warming carbon dioxide or its equivalent removed from the atmosphere or prevented from entering it in the first place.
They are bought by emitters of greenhouse gases to offset their activities. The market is currently worth $2 billion a year and Bloomberg BNEF has forecast it may reach $1 trillion within 15 years.
