World Bank backs Moldova to restore degraded lands, issue carbon credits

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on October 26 announced the issuance of the first carbon credits generated by the Moldova Soil Conservation project, and purchased by the World Bank's BioCarbon Fund.

The issuance is for 851,911 temporary certified emission reductions (tCER), which is the largest issuance of carbon credits from a reforestation project in the Emerging Europe and Central Asia countries.

This is the second land use and land-use change project to be registered with the UNFCCC, and the first to issue carbon credits in Moldova.

The country director for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Qimiao Fan, said on this occasion that the World Bank commits to back Moldova's efforts to increase forest land, to address soil degradation and to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The project has an impact at local level by improving the land management practices and by generating incomes from carbon sequestration which has already been reinvested into the second reforestation project, setting a good example for replication for the other states, Fan added.

Franka Braun, Carbon Finance Specialist at the World Bank, said that Moldova's forest cover has historically been extremely low, leading to severe soil degradation and erosion, and the intervention at national level for reforestation has visibly changed Moldova's landscape.

Presently, the agency «Moldsilva» manages over 302,000 hectares of forest, which accounts for 8.9 per cent of the country's total area. Other 44,000 hectares of forest or 1.3 per cent is under the management of mayoralties, and 3,200 hectares (0.1 per cent) are in private ownership.

About 40 per cent of the country's lands have eroded soil, with the figure increasing annually by an average of 0.9 per cent. The annual fertile soil losses are estimated to 26 million tons.

Adapted from Moldpres