There is a country in Africa that has stopped limiting itself to statements of intent.
Not a headline-grabbing announcement at a COP conference, but a national strategy, a law regulating carbon markets down to the smallest detail, and a legally binding emissions reduction target.
Zambia is demonstrating how the climate crisis can be transformed into an economic opportunity, starting precisely where the challenge is greatest: land use.
With its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), submitted to the UNFCCC in October 2025, Zambia updated the climate targets it had originally set in 2021. The figures are clear:
A 25% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, unconditionally.
Up to a 47% reduction by 2030 if additional international support becomes available, including finance, technology transfer, and access to carbon markets.
Both targets are measured against a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, using 2010 as the baseline year.
The real challenge: 73% of emissions come from deforestation.
In Zambia, heavy industry is not the main source of emissions. The real challenge lies in land use: according to data from the Green Climate Fund, deforestation alone accounts for 73% of the country's total emissions.
Not industry. Not transportation.
But forests disappearing, primarily cut down to produce charcoal, which remains the main source of household energy for millions of rural families.
Any serious climate strategy for Zambia must start there.
The country is home to approximately 49 million hectares of forest, more than 60% of its national territory and contributes around 6% of Africa’s total carbon credit output. The question is not whether Zambia has the resources to act. The question is whether it has the institutional framework and capacity to turn that potential into real action.
A Law to Regulate Carbon Markets
In December 2024, Zambia enacted the Green Economy and Climate Change Act (Act No. 18 of 2024), becoming one of the first African countries to establish a legal framework for carbon markets.
The legislation:
Establishes the Green Economy and Climate Change Fund;
Regulates the national carbon market for the first time, including the registration and oversight of independent verifiers;
Formally incorporates the Paris Agreement into Zambian law.
Having a legal framework that clearly defines who can generate carbon credits, how they are verified, and how benefits are shared with local communities makes a tangible difference in a sector where a lack of transparency has already caused significant problems worldwide.
The Strategy Behind the Law: Four Key Pillars
Eight months before the law was enacted, in April 2024, the government had already launched the National Green Growth Strategy 2024- 2030, the framework that the new legislation has now made operational and legally binding.
The Strategy is built around four pillars:
Resilient and low-emission growth - energy transition, efficiency improvements, and reducing dependence on charcoal in rural areas.
Resource efficiency - sustainable management of water, land, and biodiversity, with a focus on agricultural systems that interact with forests.
Natural capital valorization - carbon markets, payments for ecosystem services, and nature-based tourism. Forests are no longer seen as a cost to be protected, but as assets to be valued and leveraged.
Inclusion - equitable access to the benefits of the green transition, with a focus on rural communities, women, and young people. Without this pillar, Zambia’s green economy risks replicating the pattern of previous extractive cycles: concentrated benefits and distributed costs.
According to the UNDP Climate Promise, Zambia is now one of the African countries with the most advanced NDC implementation pathways not only in terms of declared ambition, but also in terms of real operational capacity.
Why It Matters Beyond Zambia
Zambia is not a perfect model, nor a finished one. It is a work in progress, with all the contradictions and challenges that any work in progress inevitably brings.
But in a continent where international climate finance often arrives without finding local institutions capable of absorbing and deploying it effectively, Zambia is building those structures from within: first a strategy, then a law, then a regulated market. In that order.
It is in this very country, in the same regions where deforestation accounts for 73% of total emissions, that we operate: through forest restoration projects and alternative value chains to charcoal production, such as beekeeping.
The regulatory framework that Zambia is putting in place is not merely a backdrop. It is the foundation that makes what we do on the ground both possible and measurable.