CommuniTree – Nicaragua

The award-winning CommuniTree Carbon Program is the largest reforestation initiative in Nicaragua, working with thousands of smallholder farmers to create long-term income opportunities from growing trees on underused parts of their land.  

The CommuniTree Carbon program is run by Taking Root, an organisation on a mission to improve farmer livelihoods by restoring global forest ecosystems. The program is working with hundreds of communities across Nicaragua, helping smallholder farming families to reforest the under-utilized parts of their farms in exchange for direct payments over time as the trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere. 

The program’s unique impact comes from its belief that for forest restoration to be a successful solution to climate change, trees must benefit and be valuable to local communities for the long term. As one of the poorest countries in the Americas, the program is specifically designed so that the forests improve the lives of Nicaraguan farmers traditionally earning less than $2 per day. The program does this by:

Creating new forms of income for farmers including:

• Direct farmer payments for growing the forests over a 10-year period, which amount to at least 60% of the carbon credit sale price.
• Helping farmers build forest enterprises by creating and selling products from the forests they are growing such as high value woodcrafts, biochar, and sustainable shade-grown coffee.

Generating additional benefits for farmers and their communities to prosper including:

• Large-scale employment opportunities by creating thousands of local seasonal jobs to support the operations of the program such as seed gathering, nursery building, and tree planting.
• Climate adaptation and resilience provided by the forests helping mitigate the risk to farmers’ crops from extreme weather events caused by climate change such as droughts, flooding, and increased temperatures.
• Biodiversity enhancement through the planting of native and naturalised tree species to provide habitat for local wildlife, with natural regeneration encouraged across parcels. 
• Restoration of degraded landscapes and national watersheds through the establishment of polyculture forests, helping to replenish water aquifers, regulate local temperatures, stabilise the soil and provide shade for livestock.
• Income consistency as the activities from growing the forests take place in farmers’ off-season, helping farmers get a consistent source of income during the times of the year when it is most needed.
• Knowledge building through the community workshops and one-to-one sessions to educate farmers on the best silvicultural practises and sustainable forest management.

The CommuniTree Program reports on and communicates these impacts through its use of cutting-edge technology. Using Taking Root’s technology platform (formerly known as FARM-TRACE) the CommuniTree Program uses mobile, satellite and machine learning data to track its impacts with farmers to deliver effective, targeted interventions on farms and give unparalleled transparency to program funders.