One Acre Fund
- Ashu Sikri (Unlicensed)
Notes from Feb 28 call with John Mundy who looks over carbon finance, technology partnerships and global data strategy within OAF. Thanks to @Andrew Hicks (Unlicensed) for setting up.
Agreed to checkin again in April on three fronts:
Initial results from FRAME model intercomparison. OAF is considering CoolFarmTool but apparently their reference factors are not great for Africa; he’s curious to know what we find
OAF exploring jurisdictional approaches to tree planting where carbon mitigation will count towards national NDCs in Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda. Govt engagement will be critical for such work and OAF sees value in collaborating given our relative strength there.
John presenting an updated OAF climate strategy with his team in March and should be able to sahre more about it in April
Some other notes
OAF has previously been all about income gain but feels it needs to layer in climate resilience going forward
Sees a real revenue opportunity in carbon
Their main focus is tree planting since they have encourage farmers to plant trees over the years
one issue that some of these trees are used for timber so will need to sort out additionality / permanence issues
Biochar science is solid but worried about operational complexity (can farmers really do pyrolysis on farm or do you need larger equipment?)
Launching a pilot with Rabobank Acorns and exploring something with TNC / Planvivo
Interested is ecosystem services payments more generally (eg, beyond carbon): soil erosion, land restoration, perennial crops but nothing concrete here yet
Intrigued about issuing credits that don’t go through GS / Verra registries; in discussion with Compassionate Carbon whose Philanthropic Reforestation program doesn’t quantity carbon but does record and report on tree planting initiatives (“offset lite”); not sure what this translates to in terms of $ but interesting.
Speaking with Terracarbon to help with project development (Dan Kane who we know through OpenTEAM is here now)
On the resilience side, focus is insurance; all 1.4mn OAF farmers have a insurance cover
Room for improvement with existing cover; current product payouts tied to area based yield and only cover a portion of the credit package that OAF provides
OAF doesn’t have accurate data on weather and water risk or very good seasonal forecasting; want to add this to design a better product
Want to focus soil health and on-farm
We spoke about the need for products that combine adaptation / mitigation finance and value of setting up regular checkins to share learnings on climate finance (maybe include others as well)
John mentioned Dalberg’s Climate Action Platform which is Africa focused and may be something for us to plug into. @alesha (Unlicensed) I can reachout or feel free to do so, I think James Mwangi is driving this