Spekboom restoration in South Africa: Can soil carbon farming revive the Eastern Cape?

South Africa's Eastern Cape is testing whether mass-planting spekboom can turn badly degraded farmland into a carbon asset. The drought-tolerant succulent is being used to restore Albany thicket that was stripped by decades of goat and ostrich farming. Restoration projects earn carbon credits for the carbon dioxide the recovering thicket draws down, and the model is now attracting serious money. A World Bank outcome bond priced at $120 million is backing these projects, with Singapore-based Imperative Global Solutions drawing $25 million and lining up another $66 million in loans. Amazon has agreed to buy 1.95 million carbon credits from the first 50,000 hectares. Imperative plans to plant across 100,000 hectares, with an estimated $500 million flowing into the local economy over four decades. The big open question is whether the carbon math holds. Imperative assumes 10.4 tonnes of CO2e per hectare per year, while smaller projects assume 4.6 to 8.5. Independent verification is limited, and key contract details are not public. The article is a useful look at how soil carbon farming could work at scale, and what could break it.