Vichada Afforestation, Colombia

Across North and South America, grasslands have been degraded from decades cattle grazing. The total project area for tree planting spans over 41 farms, which are located between the Bita and Meta rivers, in the municipalities of Puerto Carreño and La Primavera, Vichada, Colombia. Without the additional revenue from carbon finance, commercial forestry projects would not be an attractive alternative to the common baseline practice of intensive agriculture which would lead to further land degradation. 

Afforestation creates a forest where there was no previous tree cover, and this project targets formerly degraded lands to promote connectivity between ecosystems. The project expects to provide more than 200 full-time employment opportunities (with equal access to women and men) in a zone historically affected by poverty.

This project’s goal is to restore land degraded by cattle raising through afforestation activities. The new timber plantations remove carbon as trees grow and increase tree cover through re-planting after each seven-year harvest cycle. The newly planted timber species are Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus pellita) and Acacia (Acacia mangium). It is a grouped project that aims to recover degraded grasslands that are expected to remain degraded or continue to degrade by livestock in the absence of the project.

In addition to delivering emission removals over the project’s lifetime to take climate action (SDG 13), the project delivers additional benefits:

• Gender Equality: Increases equal-opportunity job opening for women in Colombia that can ultimately decrease time spent on unpaid domestic work and increases the proportion of women in managerial positions.
• Decent Work and Economic Growth: Increases full-time employment opportunities that align with a low-carbon economic transition. 
• Life on Land: Increases forest area, decreases degraded land area, and increases progress towards sustainable forest management.