I would like to share the following story by Andrew Mahar, AM, written on Linkedin yesterday.
Quote.
Fifteen years ago, I met maun Joao Tadeu Gusmao and mana Leopoldina Guterres, a couple from a very remote area in Timor-Leste called Baguia. Eleven years ago, we established a tree growing project to replant the forest around the ten villages of Baguia.
This was the start of an enterprise now called WithOneSeed or Ho Musan Ida in the local language, a carbon farming program paying farmers an annual incentive payment to grow and manage trees.
Today there are more that 1000 farmers growing around 250,000 trees.
The WithOneSeed program is the first internationally certified community carbon farming project under the Gold Standard in Timor-Leste and the Indo-Pacific region.
This week, WithOneSeed was successful with achieving the third performance audit of the program. This audit took nearly five months to complete, and is a rigorous review by an independent auditor of the whole WithOneSeed program.
The outcome of the audit is that there are now over 32,000 VERs and 100,000 PERs that are available to companies and individuals wanting to reach net zero. That takes the total carbon drawdown from WithOneSeed program to just under 200,000 tonnes of CO2e from the global atmosphere since the program began - not huge in the global scheme, but a significant contribution for a smallholder tree farming community in least developed country. Over US$500k has been paid directly into the Baguia community.
This audit was undertaken using a unique technology developed by xpand Foundation called TreeO2 which uses radio frequency tags (RFID) on all trees. Community forestry officers use TreeO2 to monitor every tree, every year given accurate reports on number of trees and the carbon being sequestered.
In partnership with Ho Musan Ida, Oxfam in Timor-Leste and xpand Foundation, and funded by the União Europeia em Timor-Leste, the WithOneSeed model is being established in four more municipalities in Timor-Leste.
WithOneSeed is not simply about planting trees it is about growing trees and planting ideas.
Comment.
Perhaps some thought could be given to reproducing the ‘WithOneSeed” project model in the Solomon Islands.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
