AfriCarbon
Board

Dr Anthony Mills

Dr Anthony Mills is the CEO and founder of AfriCarbon (Pty) Ltd and C4 EcoSolutions (Pty) Ltd.

C4 EcoSolutions is a consulting business that develops and implements climate change projects for governments and UN agencies globally (www.c4es.co.za). The company has worked in over 80 countries since its inception in 2006.

Anthony’s scientific background is in ecology and soil science and he remains involved in these academic fields as Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Soil Science, Stellenbosch University. His academic qualifications include a BSc Zoology (University of Cape Town), MSc Environmental Geochemistry (University of Cape Town), an MPhil in Environment and Development (University of Cambridge) and a PhD in Soil Science (Stellenbosch University).

Anthony regularly publishes in the peer-reviewed academic literature on a wide range of topics, including soil chemistry, ecology, ecosystem restoration, climate change adaptation and carbon sequestration.

Over the past 20 years, Anthony has examined carbon stocks in several ecosystems in South Africa. The results of this work from the Eastern Cape thicket have been particularly newsworthy: degradation of thicket by goats resulted in surprisingly large losses of carbon – up to 350 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare – from the landscape. In subsequent studies, Anthony showed that this lost carbon returns remarkably quickly in sites where spekboom cuttings have been used to restore the thicket ecosystem.