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Save the Sand: “Carbon without community is just accounting”

Exclusive interview with Richie Laburn, CEO of the Save the Sand project.

 

Interview Summary: Richie Laburn, CEO of Save the Sand, outlines a project that blends conservation, carbon finance and community empowerment across the Sabie-Sand River catchment in Mpumalanga. Revived from a government water initiative, it now aims to plant 2.5 million indigenous trees, sequestering seven million tonnes of carbon over 40 years while strengthening local livelihoods. The scheme integrates ecological restoration, agroforestry and benefit-sharing frameworks, positioning communities as central stewards rather than peripheral stakeholders.

Laburn stresses rigorous monitoring, Verra certification and the principle that “carbon without community is just accounting.” He highlights Africa’s unique ecological and social assets, the challenges of evolving methodologies, data infrastructure and trust-building, and concludes with confidence that Save the Sand offers a replicable model for high-integrity, community-rooted carbon markets.

https://youtu.be/KYjOOxf1KAc

Thank you for joining us. Please can we start with some background on you, your role at the Save the Sand and the organisation’s goals.

My background sits at the intersection of conservation, business and finance. I live within the project area in the Lowveld so this landscape isn’t abstract to me. It’s personal.

Save the Sand was originally a Government-initiated project, focused on water conservation in the Sabie-Sand catchment. In 2023 I reinvigorated it as a large-scale nature-based carbon project. We operate across the Sabie and Sand River catchments in Mpumalanga—630,000 hectares of communal land adjacent to Kruger National Park, home to roughly 120,000 households across ten Traditional Authorities. Our goal is to plant 2.5 million native trees to sequester approximately 7 million tonnes of verified carbon, and create a durable economic foundation for communities who have been stewarding this land for generations without adequate financial reward for doing so.

The core thesis is simple: this catchment has been sequestering carbon for centuries. We’re just finally building the receipt.

Tell us more about your project in the Sabie-Sand River Catchment through tree planting, sustainable agriculture and community empowerment.

The project operates at three levels simultaneously.

At the ecological level, we’re planting native fruit and nut-bearing trees—marula, wild fig, indigenous species suited to this specific savanna landscape—on croplands, homesteads, school grounds and degraded riparian zones. These trees don’t just sequester carbon. They stabilise soils, improve water quality in the Sand River system, and restore habitat connectivity into Kruger. And here’s the thing that people often miss: the Sand River doesn’t stop at the Kruger fence—and it doesn’t stop at the South African border either. The Sabie and Sand River catchments flow through Mozambique providing water to people in Maputo.

What we plant here has water security implications for two countries. That’s why we’ve structured the project within the SADC transboundary water governance framework—through LIMCOM and INMACOM, the Limpopo and Inkomati-Maputo watercourse commissions—giving this work a regional mandate that goes well beyond a single carbon project.

At the agricultural level, we’re integrating agroforestry into smallholder farming systems. Trees on cropland aren’t in competition with food production—properly designed, they enhance it. Improved shade, soil moisture retention, and fruit yield all translate directly to food security for families.

At the community level, we’ve structured various tiers of benefit-sharing—from direct tree custodian revenue share paid to households, to local employment and enterprise creation, to a community infrastructure fund at Traditional Authority level. We’re not building a project. We’re building an institution.

What motivated Save the Sand to focus on nature-based carbon credits, and how does this approach differ from other carbon offset models?

Carbon finance is the only mechanism large enough to make restoration at this scale economically viable. You cannot fund 40 years of tree planting and community livelihoods on grants alone.

What makes Save the Sand different is threefold.

First, every tree we plant is traceable. We’re building a census-based monitoring system—not statistical sampling—which means we account for each tree planted, its species, its location, its carbon accumulation. The tonne is just the unit. The story is the landscape.

Second, our carbon value chain doesn’t end at the credit. The same trees generating carbon revenue are producing fruit and other biomass—multiple income streams from a single land intervention.

Third, and most importantly: carbon without community is just accounting. We’re building an economy. The governance model is genuinely community-rooted and centered around individual land stewards.

How do you ensure that the carbon credits generated are scientifically robust and meet international verification standards?

We’re registered under Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard, using the VM0047 ARR methodology and we’re also pursuing dual certification with the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards at Gold Level, which adds a rigorous co-benefit layer on top of the carbon accounting. An independent third-party verification body is conducting validation at the moment.

On the data side, we’ve built our own digital MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) system on a spatial database platform. The field data architecture is designed from the ground up to meet Verra audit requirements, not retrofitted after the fact. That matters enormously for a 40-year project—the data infrastructure has to be as durable as the trees.

Bad carbon built a bad reputation. Good carbon has to rebuild it—one verified tree at a time. That’s the standard we’re holding ourselves to.

(left) Richie Laburn and Save the Sand stakeholders, (right) Sand River middle catchment

Save the Sand works closely with local communities—how do you balance conservation goals with the livelihoods and rights of those communities?

The framing of “balance” is actually the wrong starting point. The assumption that conservation and livelihoods are in tension is a colonial-era construct. In our context, they’re the same thing.

We’re not bringing conservation to communities. We’re recognising the conservation they’ve always been doing.

The communities living in this catchment are not obstacles to conservation. They are the conservation infrastructure. Without their stewardship of 40,000 hectares of communal land, there is no project.

In practical terms: Free, Prior and Informed Consent processes, Benefit-sharing frameworks co-designed with community input. Households retain the right to use the trees they plant—for fruit, for shade, for medicine—while the carbon value flows back to them through the crediting mechanism.

And here’s the equity reality: a tree custodian in Bushbuckridge is doing the same ecological work as a carbon engineer in London. It’s time they got paid like it.

The rights of communities are not a constraint on the project. They are the foundation of it.

(left) Save the Sand Marula Nursery, (right) Save the Sand pilot planting site

How important is the continent for the future of high-integrity carbon markets?

Africa isn’t late to the carbon market. The carbon market is late to Africa.

The continent holds a disproportionate share of the world’s remaining intact ecosystems, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration potential—yet has historically captured a fraction of the capital flows that potential should command.

What Africa brings that other regions cannot replicate is the combination of land scale, ecological richness, and the social dimension. High-integrity carbon isn’t just about tonnes. It’s about permanence, co-benefits, and whether communities are genuine partners. These communities aren’t sitting on degraded land. They’re sitting on an undercapitalised asset. African projects, properly structured, set the benchmark for what the global voluntary carbon market should aspire to.

The continent that gets blamed most for climate vulnerability holds the most cards in the climate solution. South Africa specifically sits at an interesting inflection point—domestic carbon pricing, an emerging Article 6 framework, and a biodiversity estate that is globally significant. Africa’s land is its balance sheet. And for the first time we’re learning how to read it properly.

You are working in a system that is constantly evolving and changing. What are the main challenges in your view?

Three things.

The first is methodology risk. The voluntary carbon market’s credibility has taken hits from projects that overclaimed. Verra responded with methodology reforms, Article 6 negotiations are reshaping sovereign frameworks, and the rules governing what constitutes a high-integrity credit are still being written. We’re building a 40-year project on regulatory ground that shifts beneath us.

The second is data infrastructure. Census-based monitoring of 2.5 million trees across 40,000 hectares of communal land is technically achievable—but only if the data systems are treated as a first-order investment, not an afterthought. Most carbon projects underinvest in MRV. We cannot. The land already works. We’re building the financial system to reward it—and that system lives or dies on data quality.

The third is community trust at pace. Finance timelines and community decision-making timelines are structurally misaligned. Capital wants certainty in months. Genuine FPIC (free prior informed consent) with ten traditional authorities takes the time it takes. Compressing that process to satisfy investor schedules is how projects fail. We’ve chosen to hold the line on process, even when it costs us time.

(left) SanParks nursery outgrower participant, (right) Save the Sand carbon technical tree measurement

What has been the most rewarding aspect of working in this field, and what has been the most difficult?

The most rewarding: standing at our pilot site—two hectares, 150 trees planted by local custodians—and understanding that this is the proof of concept for something that could span 40,000 hectares. The gap between that small clearing and the full project vision is enormous. But the physics are the same. If the system works at 2 hectares, it scales. Forty years is not a constraint. It’s the point. That moment of first proof is irreplaceable.

The most difficult: the weight of expectation from the communities themselves. These are people living below the poverty line in one of South Africa’s most economically marginalised regions. When we arrive with a vision of carbon finance and long-term benefit sharing, we are raising hopes in places where hope has been raised and disappointed before. The responsibility of that is not something you get used to. It sharpens every decision.

Thank you again for joining us. Any final thoughts from your side?

What gives me genuine confidence—not optimism, confidence—is that the fundamentals are sound. The land is real. The trees are real. The communities are real partners. The carbon methodology is rigorous. The governance structures are legitimate.

What we’re doing at Save the Sand is not complicated in concept: we’re helping 120,000 households turn the ecological stewardship they’ve always practised into an economic asset they’ve never been paid for. The land already works. We’re building the financial system to reward it.

If we get this right—and I believe we will—this becomes a replicable model for how large-scale, community-rooted nature-based carbon projects should be structured across the continent.

Africa’s land is its balance sheet. And we are now learning how to read it properly.