The AISCC Carbon Registry
The African Island Climate Commission has been established by African Heads of State to address the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, societies, and economies. It comprises the following nine member countries, and one founding partner, the Kingdom of Morocco. Cabo Verde, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mauritius, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, and Zanzibar – Tanzania.
The AISCC Carbon Registry is the first regional carbon offset for African SIDSs and Island States. It is a digital repository for the key information relating to projects aimed at generating carbon offsets (i.e., reduction, avoidance, and removal of one metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent) and verified carbon credits originating from the AISCC’s Party members, following the AISCC standardized and harmonized protocol for GHG including carbon accounting and reporting. AISCC’s Administrator issues credits to projects that successfully generate offsets. It allows transparent and reliable documentation and visualization of carbon emission reduction projects. The Registry makes it easier to fast-track the flows of certified credits, including issuance, retirement, transfer, sales, cancellation, and surrendering processes. It does not sell credits, but it reduces the transaction costs for the exchange of credits between the project developers, potential buyers of credits from the global exchange markets, regulators, and standard-setting organizations, among others.
The AISCC Carbon Registry and standardized and harmonized GHG protocol are two cornerstones of the GHG also referred to as the Carbon Offset Programme of the AISCC. They were developed by to promote high-integrity regional carbon markets, boost the supply of high-quality and trustworthy offsets, or carbon credits, and scale up the flows of public and private investment in those programmatic actions which genuinely reduce the cascading climate risks and threats of climate extremes and promote resilient infrastructure, societies, and economies. The AISCC standardized and harmonized GHG protocol covers the best internationally acclaimed and available standards, and robust science-based methodologies relating to carbon offsetting. It includes tools and guides for carbon offset project development, the establishment of emission baselines, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting of emissions, for projects relating to blue carbon mainly from conservation of mangrove and seagrasses, agriculture, forest management, soil enrichment, energy efficiency, waste, rice cultivation, and other important sectors. Non-party members who follow those science-based methodologies and AISCC harmonized protocol may also submit their projects to the AISCC Carbon Registry to obtain high-quality credits.
The AISCC Carbon Registry has high transparency, accuracy, coverage (interoperable with other national, and regional registries), and connectivity with auction and trading platforms for transactions thanks to its adoption of high technology, and scalability (configurable and expandable for changing marketplaces). It allows the member States of AISCC to build a good oversight of the mitigations occurring within their geographical boundaries and related international transfer including through sales, and report NDC progress at the UNFCCC.
