The Project & Our Work

I've had a few people ask me to explain exactly what we are doing here. I must be clear that this blog is NOT intended to be a work blog...at all. This blog is about Tristan and my life here. However, as always happens when you life is your job, the lines get crossed and one becomes the other. So here we go.

There are a lot of ways to describe the project we are working on. What follows is my preferred explanation.

I am the Operations Manager for a 299,640 hectare forest conservation project. Tristan is the Forest Manager for all forestry and agroforestry activities within the project. The DRC, with a salute to the future, has granted our companies the first ever Conservation Concession in the country. Previously this land was designated for logging (and has been actively logged more than once). Logging brings some short term benefits to communities (jobs, easy access wood, etc.) but, a significant portion of the highly valuable wood revenue goes directly to the federal government, and an even higher percentage directly to offshore logging companies. This project is designed so that communities can receive the true-value of keeping their ecosystems intact. Project benefits are transferred to communities through infrastructure development, improvement of and access to health and education and other activities that will be decided and developed by the communities themselves. The goal is to sustainably move desperate communities to a trajectory of health and livelihood enhancement and forest and ecosystem conservation. This is not a simple job. 

The basic framework of the project works like this. We have a unit of funding, voluntary carbon offsets , which are generated from measuring how much carbon dioxide we avoid creating due to preventing the logging of the forest. In other words, if it wasn’t for this project the land would still be an active logging concession and the harvesting of trees and forest would release carbon in to the atmosphere. We sell carbon offsets to companies and governments who want to voluntarily* offset their own carbon emissions via a project that brings biodiversity and community enhancement benefits to those who live and use those forests on a daily basis. The industry term for this is sometimes Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES); the people living in the forest are paid for the value of the ecosystem services that their intact forests provide to the planet.  Often, western world PES falls under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitments of companies, so the idea that industries should not independently profit without giving back to the planet which the business impacts.  CSR is purely voluntary, but it is becoming an ethical industry norm. 

Project communities are direct receivers of offset sales and in each village we are deep in the process of setting up Local Development Committees (CLDs in French) that will decide with their communities how project benefits will be utilized. In the mean time we work off a document (called the Social Terms of Reference) that was developed over many months of community consultations.  This document, a legal agreement with 26 project area communities, identifies key areas for funding. They pretty exclusively fall under improvement and access to Education, Health and Agriculture/Markets, all critical needs for communities in rural DRC. 

In short our jobs are to run all project activities within our assigned budget. Current activities include School Supply Distribution, a Mobile Clinic and Mobile Vaccination program, Agricultural Alternative Demonstration Gardens and School Building. Every 15^th and 30^th of the month I send a marketing update to our investors. I will also post this here so you can read our most current activities. 

*Voluntary Carbon Market: Most published data on the carbon market reflects compliance requirements that have essentially commoditized carbon as a tradable good with a fairly standardized price and quality.  In parallel with this compliance market, voluntary activity by businesses and individuals wanting to reduce GHG emissions for reasons other than statutory compliance grew substantially in 2005.  This side of the market essentially represents consumer demand for action on global warming and has the potential to be an active driver of change as the international community struggles to fully implement an effective climate change framework. While maturing quickly, the voluntary market remains small, fragmented and multi-layered.

Project facts you might be interested in learning:

-       There are between 32,000 (administrative number) and  52,000 (internally calculated number) people living in the project area;

-       The Bantu majority are actually immigrants to the land from many hundreds of years ago, the native people, now called pygmies, are severely marginalized and live on the very cusp of survival.

-       These people live between 26 main villages with annex villages and farms, located in 3 very different tribal areas.

-       The local language is Lingala, a language that was developed as a trading language and is actually no one’s native language.

-       The project employs over 80 full time local staff. (Here are some of them.)

-       Most project travel is done by boat across the lake. This lake is the colour of Root Beer as there is no clay in the soil to absorb the phenolic acid created by the surrounding forest.

-       The project area is home to Bonobos (our closest relatives) and is in the migratory corridor for forest elephants. We hope the elephants decide to come back to hang out with us soon, our investors will be thrilled when this happens.

-       People living in the villages in the project area are in greater poverty, worse health and have less access to health care and education than ever before since independence in 1960

-       This is one of the few countries of the world were the grandparents remember a time of plenty and freedom and the grandchildren know none of this.

-       The project design has been validated to the world's best standards for voluntary carbon offsets: the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) and the Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance Standard (CCB).

-       The project undergoes an annual verification to ensure that it is continuing the meet its project objectives (ie it is positively affecting the communities and biodiversity in the areas), as well we can utilize this information for future adaptive management.