Projects

Peru

Chocolate pods after harvesting
© Jake Voelcker

Protecting the Amazon forest from deforestation and establishing agroforestry plots on deforested land.

The Amazon is under immense pressure from deforestation, across all the countries of the Amazon basin. This is the largest forested area of the world: it contributes significantly to global climatic conditions and holds massive stores of carbon. The tragic rate of deforestation is one of the single highest sources of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere.

We have established a partnership with the Ashaninka group through the Ecotribal organisation. This tribal group of about 10,000 people occupy an area of 30,000 square kilometers of the Amazon rainforest, living in 50 villages. They are exemplary stewards of the forest, preserving its integrity. Traditionally they live by hunting and shifting cultivation of forest clearings, where an area is abandoned every few years to become reforested, while they clear another area for cultivation. Over the last 15 years, loggers have been offering money to the Ashaninka for standing timber, and the forest is now being cleared at an unsustainable rate. This project makes use of carbon offset money to pay local communities in this area to not sell to the loggers and to protect the forest from illegal logging. At the same time cleared areas are being replanted with productive trees to make permanent agroforestry plots which will provide more food security and saleable commodities.

(Not yet validated under CCB standard.)

Ashaninka tree nursery
© Carlos Montenegro