Forest Credits’ projects have been carefully chosen and designed in collaboration with local NGOs and communities and are aligned with the highest methodological standards. They are focused on areas of ecological importance and include benefits such as biodiversity protection, community participation and sustainable development, all of which give them greater value and permanence.
Neblina Reserve, Northwest Ecuador
The first of Rainforest Concern’s dedicated carbon forestry projects is part of the Neblina Reserve in Ecuador, a biodiversity hotspot and important watershed for local communities.
This area of cloud forest is located in an area under threat of deforestation from agriculture and large-scale extractive industries. By protecting carbon stocks in trees compared to a baseline deforestation rate, the project satisfies the first criterion of “additionality”, the main principle of carbon offsetting. Calculations concluded that protecting the existing 1,310-hectare reserve against deforestation would result in 366 hectares of avoided deforestation, saving the emission of approximately 253,873 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over a period of 30 years.
However, simply protecting the reserve is not enough to guarantee long-term success, so other activities are carried out to ensure the ongoing sustainability of the project. These include the implementation of community programmes (e.g. agroforestry) involving stakeholders in the buffer zone of the reserve. This is a crucial component as it raises awareness and improves the quality of life of local communities, thereby relieving the threat of deforestation both within the reserve and outside it, preventing the deforestation simply being displaced elsewhere.
We are currently developing additional Forest Credits projects in Colombia, Chile, and Costa Rica.
Over the past 18 years Rainforest Concern has been protecting hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. After the success of Neblina, we will be developing some of these projects for Forest Credits.