Our forestry project is centred around Bushenyi in southwest Uganda. This is a humid, tropical area at elevations of 3,000 feet and over. The agriculture type is mixed farming of cows and crops. Common produce includes beans, millet, ground nuts, maize, potatoes, peas and banana.
Our partner in the field is The International Small Group & Tree Planting Programme (TIST). The project has two main objectives. Firstly, it encourages small farmers to plant and maintain the trees they need. Secondly, it is developing a unique methodology to enable such farmers to benefit from small cash incomes generated from the carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto incorporated the concept of carbon credits which can be traded on the open market: planting trees can generate such credits as trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester the carbon in the wood they form.
Carbon credits have the potential to provide a huge incentive for small farmers to plant and look after trees. Farmers in these regions struggle to make a living and the attraction of a small cash income through tree planting is considerable. The challenge is to access authenticated credits under Kyoto – this requires accurate measurement and ongoing monitoring of the trees planted. TIST is addressing this challenge in an innovative way: it is encouraging farmers to organise themselves into Small Groups and for such groups to become partners in TIST’s overall cooperative for collecting data and recording tree growth. This involves meticulous monitoring in the field using palm computer technology. In due course TIST will make single block applications for Kyoto credits with a view to selling them and, after meeting programme costs, distributing the balance of the money to the individual farmers. Farmers could not by themselves hope to access Kyoto payments which involve complex and bureaucratic procedures.
Alongside tree planting the project works with the Small Groups to address HIV/AIDS, malaria prevention, nutrition, education and fuel efficiency concerns.
Our Trust is funding the planting of a minimum of 150,000 trees by 150 Small Groups over the next three years. The following principles apply:
- We will not be providing Small Groups with any seeds and tools: these costs are met by the farmers themselves. There will, however, be small payments to farmers for maintaining their trees as and until Kyoto Carbon Credits start generating an alternative cash income.
- A large proportion of the programme’s afforestation/reforestation activities centre on training and spreading knowledge of tree-related best practice.
- Accurate and sophisticated quantification of trees planted and annual growth rates are managed by the programme. Maintaining the tree stock is crucial if local community and climatic benefits are to continue accruing.
This highly innovative programme is designed to achieve large-scale tree planting by the local communities who need them, who will benefit from a cash flow under Kyoto payments and who will be helping to address the overall problem of climate change.
