South Africa’s new gold rush: Big money, high stakes in emerging spekboom restoration sector

In South Africa's Eastern Cape, decades of goat farming for mohair has stripped roughly 90% of the Albany thicket biome, turning dense bushland into bare desert. A hardy, water-storing shrub called spekboom is now central to restoration efforts, since its low, spreading branches create shaded, moisture-retaining conditions that let other plants take root in soil that otherwise bakes above 60°C in summer.

Because spekboom draws down atmospheric carbon dioxide as it grows, restoration projects can sell carbon credits — priced roughly $20 to $45 per metric ton — to fund the labor-intensive planting. This has drawn interest from a major international carbon-project developer, the World Bank, and Amazon, alongside smaller existing outfits like Return to Thicket, which maintains a research plot dating to 1976 on a former mohair farm.

The sector's old guard is watching the new money with cautious optimism, worried that scaling up fast could outpace the science behind the carbon calculations underpinning the whole business model.

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