Kariba REDD+ Project — Carbon Credit Over-Issuance and Correction (Zimbabwe)

The Kariba REDD+ Project, launched in 2011, was for over a decade promoted as a flagship community-based avoided-deforestation scheme, covering roughly 1.3 million hectares of communal land across four Rural District Councils (Binga, Nyaminyami, Hurungwe and Mbire) in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley. The area forms a biodiversity corridor linking Chizarira, Matusadona and Mana Pools National Parks (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) with Zambia's Lower Zambezi National Park, and project revenue funded clinics, boreholes, school subsidies, conservation agriculture and beekeeping in the four districts.

The project was developed and marketed by Carbon Green Investments (CGI), a Guernsey-registered company, with South Pole acting as the main credit reseller until October 2023, aiming to generate tradeable voluntary carbon credits from avoided deforestation while funding community development.

It became one of the highest-volume projects on the voluntary carbon market. A 2023 New Yorker investigation and reporting by the Dutch outlet Follow the Money alleged that South Pole's own satellite-based analysis had identified tens of millions of likely over-issued credits well before the company halted sales.

Verra suspended the project on 17 October 2023 pending an independent review. That review, completed in September 2025, found that of 41,955,689 total verified emission reductions generated over the project's life (26,822,953 of which had been issued as tradeable VCUs), 15,220,520 credits — about 57% of those issued — were in excess of Zimbabwe's actual avoided deforestation, because real deforestation in the reference area was significantly lower than the project's baseline assumed. Verra ordered Carbon Green Investments to repurchase and cancel the 15.2 million excess credits, invited holders of a further 4.9 million active VCUs to cancel voluntarily, permanently withdrew 10.1 million unissued reductions, and cancelled 5.0 million buffer-pool credits outright. Independent monitoring by the REDD-Monitor project separately reported community complaints that little of the carbon revenue was reaching residents of the four districts. South Pole terminated its contract with Carbon Green Investments on 27 October 2023.

Kariba is best read as a cautionary case for the wider REDD+ market: the scale of the biodiversity corridor and the community-council governance structure were real, but the carbon accounting that monetised them was not independently verified until after a decade of sales, and the correction required cancelling the majority of a decade's issued credits.