The drought-adapted succulent spekboom (Portulacaria afra) has long been trumpeted as the crown prince of South Africa’s nature-based carbon sink solutions.The World Bank ensured its coronation with a $120 million outcome-based bond, structured and named in its honor.According to Amazon, the tech giant’s commitment to buy carbon credits from the first developer to draw on the bond gave other financiers the confidence to back the industrial-scale project. Does this make the tech giant the power behind the throne of an emerging nature-based carbon credit sector?Mongabay’s investigation uncovers a sector dominated by international corporations whose investment promises are hard to scrutinize, in a cautionary tale of what happens when projects fail.

This is the third article in Mongabay’s three-part investigation of spekboom-led ecosystem restoration in South Africa. This is part of an award-winning collaboration between independent science writer Leonie Joubert, the Stellenbosch University School for Climate Studies, and the Henry Nxumalo Foundation which supports investigative journalism in Africa. Read parts one and two.

GQEBERHA, South Africa — Browsed. Heavily browsed. Knackered. This farm camp is well on the knackered side of the degradation scale, threadbare after decades of heavy livestock pressure. But the single shrub at Nick Hamp-Adam’s feet may help change that. It just needs a second chance.