EnglishFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Sarah Otterstrom
Phone: +1-805-643-7044
Email: sarah@pasopacifico.org
Paso Pacífico Commits to Launch Machete Project for Forest Restoration
A youth-led, farmer-centered solution to address climate change
New York, New York, Sept. 22, 2023
Paso Pacífico and its partners announced a Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2023 Meeting. Paso Pacífico will launch its open-source digital platform, the Machete Project, to catalyze forest restoration by connecting 300,000 youth with small-scale farmers.
According to the United Nations, nearly 3 billion people, many indigenous, reside in the rural moist tropics. This population often relies on the machete, a large steel knife, as a daily tool for their livelihoods in farming.
The machete can also be used to rebuild the forest. In a practice known as “farmer-mediated natural regeneration,” farmers expertly apply their tools to propagate trees grown from shoots and reduce weedy plants competing with young saplings.
“Small-scale and indigenous farmers are the forestry experts we need,” said Dr. Sarah Otterstrom, Ph.D., Executive Director of Paso Pacífico. “They know how to grow food for their families and are experienced at using tools to shape their environment. Yet, there’s a risk this knowledge will fade away as younger generations migrate to cities.”
The Machete Project platform provides tools needed to listen, learn, and document reforestation techniques in a digital format, enticing younger populations to connect with their hometown and become empowered as citizen scientists and visual storytellers.
Over the next three years, 300,000 youth and 2 million farmers will become engaged in this movement. Their efforts can catalyze the removal of more than a gigaton of greenhouse gasses and support a social fabric that sustains agroforestry and natural forests by recognizing the deep knowledge possessed by people who use traditional tools and their unique mastery of vegetation management.
The values that underpin the platform came about through Ashoka-ASPIRe, started in 2020 as a global initiative from Ashoka and Societal Thinking to support social entrepreneurs who seek to make a systemic impact through platform thinking and technology. Societal Thinking is an initiative of Ekstep Foundation that aims to help reimagine and realize exponential change.
The platform is possible thanks to commitment partner SoftServe and its crowdsourcing platform Open Tech. The software architecture has been generously supported by dozens of volunteers from SoftServe, including many programmers, business analysts, and engineers working from Ukraine.
Thanks to support from the Clinton Global Initiative, Paso Pacífico and its commitment partners, SoftServe, Ashoka – Aspire, and Societal Thinking, are sharing our Commitment to Action to increase climate resilience by sharing knowledge across the generations.
About Paso Pacífico
Paso Pacífico is on a mission to protect biodiversity in places where people live, especially in western Central America and Mexico. Through its locally led and placed-based initiatives, the organization is cultivating cross-generational engagement (and nature-based enterprise) for the preservation of wildlife corridors and the economic prosperity of stewards of the land. Dr. Sarah Otterstrom, ecologist and Ashoka Fellow leads the organization that sustains programs in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
About the Clinton Global Initiative
Founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative is a community of doers representing a broad cross section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. Through CGI’s unique model, more than 10,000 organizations have launched more than 4,000 Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable projects and programs – that are making a difference in the lives of more than 500 million people in 180 countries.
About SoftServe
SoftServe is a premier IT consulting and digital services provider. We expand the horizon of new technologies to solve today’s complex business challenges and achieve meaningful outcomes for our clients. Our boundless curiosity drives us to explore and reimagine the art of the possible. Clients confidently rely on SoftServe to architect and execute mature and innovative capabilities, such as digital engineering, data and analytics, cloud, and AI/ML.
Our global reputation is gained from more than 30 years of experience delivering superior digital solutions at exceptional speed by top-tier engineering talent to enterprise industries, including high tech, financial services, healthcare, life sciences, retail, energy, and manufacturing. Visit our website, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (Twitter) pages for more information.
About Ashoka – ASPIRe
ASPIRe is a global initiative of Ashoka Innovators of the Public, the largest network of 4000+ leading social entrepreneurs from 90+ countries. Ashoka envisions a world in which everyone is a changemaker: a world where all citizens are powerful and contribute to change in positive ways.
ASPIRe is a global Accelerator and a Learning Lab that enables Ashoka Fellows with knowledge, processes, and a support ecosystem so that they can induce exponential social change towards achieving impact at scale by activating agency, cultivating changemaking networks empowered by data and enabled by technology.