Our Impact
Impact that compounds
Kaboni Yetu measures impact across three horizons: community resilience, ecological integrity, and market readiness. All three must move together for blue carbon to deliver its promise. Figures below include both current programme outcomes and end-of-project targets, labelled accordingly.
Community Impact
Resilience before, during, and after carbon revenue
The households around Mnazi Bay live from the mangroves. Fish from the estuaries, crabs from the root systems, timber for building. When the forest degrades, so do livelihoods. The programme is built so community benefit starts before the first credit is sold, not as a promise deferred to certification, but as the structure that makes the whole thing work.
In the short term, communities earn paid and unpaid opportunities through nursery operation, restoration labour, community monitoring roles, and enterprise pilots. Better enforcement and co-management protect the estuarine nurseries that sustain fish stocks.
Over the medium term, certification readiness enables MBREMP villages to access blue carbon revenue that can be reinvested into community priorities (climate-resilient livelihoods, education, health, and patrol operations), creating a durable livelihood pathway tied directly to ecosystem stewardship.
Transparent Benefit-Sharing
Every village adopts a Governance Compact (documenting exactly how revenue will be distributed, governed, and reinvested) before any credit activity advances. Governance precedes revenue.
Women's Economic Leadership
A minimum 60% women participation target applies across all training, monitoring, and livelihood activities. Women's representation within VNRCs, VLCs, and VSLAs is strengthened through targeted leadership coaching.
Youth Employment & Skills
Community para-scientists and nursery technicians include youth, creating certified skills pathways and embedding local accountability into MRV and restoration monitoring from the start.
Grievance & Do-No-Harm Safeguards
Environmental and social safeguards ensure enforcement does not criminalise the poorest households. A formal grievance mechanism and escalation pathway is operational before restoration begins, not after.
Ecological Impact
Mangroves as a multi-service asset
Carbon Permanence
Hydrology-informed restoration, right-species/right-site zoning, and survival monitoring are designed to ensure restored mangroves deliver durable carbon storage, not merely planting numbers.
Fisheries & Biodiversity
Healthy mangroves are nursery habitat for commercially important fish and crustacean species. Improved stewardship protects the ecological base that sustains household incomes and food security.
Coastal Protection
Mangroves buffer storm surge, reduce coastal erosion, and stabilise estuaries. These are ecosystem services with direct climate adaptation value for the 15 focal villages along the MBREMP coastline.
Water Quality
Restored mangrove root systems filter sediment and nutrients from tidal flows, improving water quality in nearshore zones used for fishing, shellfish harvesting, and household water access.
Leakage Management
Livelihood diversification pilots reduce extractive pressure on mangroves, ensuring that stronger protection does not simply displace household vulnerability to other parts of the landscape.
Verification-Ready MRV
Community-run monitoring produces primary ecological data for Plan Vivo and NCMC verification, improving transparency, building local capacity, and reducing future third-party audit costs.
Secondary Project
Kunduchi Eco Park, Dar es Salaam
Kunduchi Eco Park is Kaboni Yetu's second project track, a managed coastal habitat on the Dar es Salaam coastline exploring how conservation can generate multiple revenue streams: eco-tourism, biodiversity credits, and nature-based products. It complements the community-managed rural seascape model at MBREMP with a peri-urban coastal proof of concept.
The project is in active feasibility and design development. Further details on carbon pathways, tenure arrangements, and enterprise models will be published as the project matures.
Project Development Status
Kunduchi Eco Park is in active feasibility and design development. Further details on carbon pathways, tenure arrangements, and enterprise models will be published as the project matures. Contact us for further information.
Sustainable Development Goals
Contributing to the 2030 Agenda
Kaboni Yetu's integrated approach (blue carbon finance, community governance, ecological restoration, and livelihood diversification) delivers co-benefits across eight SDGs, with particular depth on SDG 14 (ocean ecosystems), SDG 5 (women's economic empowerment), and SDG 13 (climate action through sequestration in development). All SDG contributions are measured through the ORRAA and HQBC indicator framework.