If you would like to find out more about the impending carbon tax and government’s movement toward mandatory carbon footprinting view the Climate Change White Paper at the following link:
http://www.environment.gov.za/PolLeg/WhitePapers/national_climatechange_response_whitepaper.pdf
Today we spoke with Mike Powell from Ecological Restoration Capital in Grahamstown. Mike works with a team of over 50 people to combat climate change at a local level by restoring degraded land.
Spekboom Restoration
ERC is currently planting more than 2,500 hectares of the indigenous plant species Portulacaria afra, more commonly referred to as Spekboom, to restore overgrazed agricultural land that is no longer economically productive, thus producing Verified Emissions Reductions for sale into the global carbon markets.
The company is implementing large-scale restoration of the local semi-arid forest ecosystem while focusing on conservation of indigenous plant and animal species in this endangered ecosystem.
“Rates of carbon storage by replanted spekboom were measured on a farm near Uitenhage. About 27 years Graham Slater became tired of dealing with regular flooding of his barn and set about replanting the adjacent degraded hillslope with spekboom.”
“The two-metre-high growth of spekboom on bare ground under only 250mm to 350mm of annual rainfall was almost miraculous. Each hectare of spekboom on the farm sequestered 4,2 tons of carbon a year.” Urbansrout, Mail & Guardian,
To find out more about Mike Powell’s work and his Spekboom and other projects contact:
Ecological Restoration Capital Pty Ltd, Bangor House, Somerset Str Grahamstown, South Africa /47 Strand Street, Office 603, Cape Town 8001, South Africa PO Box 769 Grahamstown, 6140
Tel:+27 (0)46 603 7004; Cell: +27 (0)82 650 1741; Fax:+27 (0)46 622 9319; skype: mike.spekboom
mike@nollengroup.com | www.ercap.co.za,