In Central America, some farmers use machetes to plant “living fences” and assist forest regrowth. There is significant potential for mass forest regrowth efforts using their techniques, but this information is hard to find.
Today, you can fund the pilot project that will gather this information, design easy instructions and pilot this program to 1000 farmers so they can grow 20,000 trees. Until 11:59 pm EDT on Friday, April 23, 2021, your donation will be doubled (up to $100) by GlobalGiving! After piloting, this program can then be refined and scale across the tropics, leading to hundreds of millions of new trees that help save our planet. Click here to donate to our planet today.
Challenge
Climate change threatens life on this planet. Though carbon finance programs aim to rapidly store carbon through growing trees, rural farmers are often excluded from their highly technical methods and top-down financing structures. These farmers often have unique knowledge and experience managing and cultivating forests by using their machetes to assist natural regeneration. Given the climate emergency, we need solutions that are inclusive and that can bring benefits to local livelihoods.
Solution
This project will gather expertise from small-scale rural farmers on the use of machetes to assist natural regeneration by removing vines, grasses and lianas from naturally growing trees. The program will also bring in farmer knowledge and technical resources on management cuttings from sprouts and stems to plant and grow trees quickly. These materials will be compiled and edited as an illustrated training manual. We will pilot this manual with 1000 farmers, helping them plant 20,000 trees.
Long-Term Impact
The training manual and work with 1000 farmers across Central America will lay the groundwork to scale up this approach to reach one million farmers in the region. As farmers are empowered to use their knowledge and tools to plant trees and grow small forests, they can reap the multiple benefits including food, timber, and ecosystem services. If 1 million farmers were to plant 3 trees, we could store 1 million tonnes of carbon and elevate the role of the farmers as climate heroes.
