Leveraging the voluntary carbon market for land protection Green Gold Forestry (GGF) looks to conserve 477,000 hectares of Peruvian Amazon, with the support of Conservation International.
GGF's Green Gold Loreto 1 aims to protect the area while developing industries around non-timber forest products from trees such as aguaje and açaí, like fruit and palm oil, as well as hammocks.
Land allocated for logging by the Peruvian government is acquired by and decommissioned by GGF. Having begun life as a logging company GGF now looks to preserve forests through carbon offsets and non-timber forest products to bring income to communities by forests.
It argues that by supporting local communities with stable income and skills development it will be able to reduce illegal logging in its concession. In this project approximately 4,200 people from 18 different communities border the concession, with limited access to healthcare and education. In the last three years GGF has trained 30 individuals as forest custodians.
GGF partnered with Conservation International on the deal, which provided a $250,000 loan to acquire additional machinery and solar energy equipment to power a palm oil production facility. It also assisted GGF with the carbon credit verification process for Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) on the Verra Registery. Revenue from these carbon credits further allow GGF to invest in infrastructure for its sustainable management of forests.
"The technical, commercial and financial help that Conservation International provided had an important impact on our ability to implement our non-timber forest product activities," said Gareth Hughes, CEO of GGF. "The organisation understands what we are trying to do and fully supports our activities, allowing us to develop sustainable economic opportunities for neighbouring communities through our conservation business model."
Over the past year GGF cemented its transformation from logging company to forest protector as it completed the verification and emission of its first round of Verra certified VCUs. The Green Gold Lereto 1 project was certified to have an annual retention/removal potential of more than 350,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
