Assessing the possibilities by agricultural and forestry farmers' access to carbon financing under payment scheme :

Abstract

Different economic activities lead to climate change in order for farmers to generate: income. On the other hand, among the activities farmers can mitigate it as well as obtaining the different benefits amongst carbon -financing from agriculture and forestry activities. Farmers have, continuously carried out economic activities on their land through which they generate direct income from agriculture and forestry. However, they do not consider the indirect income from the sale of carbon offsets from their activities yet they play a big role in climate change mitigation as payment for ecosystem Services. This study was carried out in Kisaikye, Bwiiza, Namasagali and Kasozi parishes in Namasagali sub county of Kamuli District. The aim was to generate information on the possibilities of agricultural and forestry farmers. to access' carbon financing under payment scheme. This is important in harnessing adaptive measures towards climate change and was done. by finding out the different activities carried out by fanners on their land as sources of income, major activities that are readily available for adoption in regard to carbon financing, their knowledge on the importance of their activities towards climate change and their willingness to establish carbon projects. The assessment was based on the willingness of farmers to accept sparing part of their land from other land uses for carbon financing project establishment. Self-administered questionnaires and field observations were used to obtain information on the existence of carbon related projects and the incomes farmers generate from the activities they carry out on their land. The gathered information was coded and analyzed in Excel, SPSS and STATA using pie charts, bar charts, frequency tables and chi-squares. These were readily available packages and simple to use and interpret. Findings indicated that Agricultural and Forestry activities are easily adopted by farmers depending on the different benefits they obtain such as economic and environmental. Farmers were able to specify the size of land they are willing to establish carbon project(s) on in hectares and the ways through which they are able to establish the carbon project by type it is concluded that there is a possibility for the farmers’ access carbon financing under payment scheme.