March 2010

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We create market opportunities through
sustainable forestry and conservation

Welcome to our blog. Here we discuss pertinent issues and post updates about
Planting Empowerment. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed. Enjoy!

MIT Biochar Report

March 13th, 2010 at 11:18 am

MIT Develops Biochar Study for Community Forestry Organization

Significant potential to make use of forest thinnings

Washington DC, March 9, 2010—A group of MBA students from the MIT Sloan School of Business traveled to Panama to look at the revenue potential of forest thinnings from Planting Empowerment's (PE) tree plantations. The team spent a week analyzing different uses for the smaller trees before recommending biochar as the most promising option.

A sustainably managed tree plantation can take ten years to produce commercially viable timber. Part of the maintenance of plantations is periodic culling of smaller trees, allowing healthier ones more space to grow. Traditionally these thinnings have little or no commercial value, and are left to rot on the forest floor or serve as firewood. As part of the MIT Sloan Entrepreneurs in International Development Club (SEID) students Lily Russell, Justin Butler, and Adam Rein studied commercial uses for these thinnings with the goal of producing earlier returns for Planting Empowerment's investors. They decided that biochar has the most potential because of its multiple uses and low initial production costs.

"When looking at alternative uses for PE’s wood fiber, we considered industrial fuel consumers (paper, pellets), furniture, a biomass power plant and a few other alternatives. However, we ultimately decided that producing biochar and fertilizer (using the biochar as an additive) were the best fit for: PE’s model, market opportunities and technical feasibility" said Lily Russell, one of the students leading the study. She added "It was fascinating to spend time with the PE team and community members involved in their projects; it gave us tremendous perspective into the social and environmental impact of the PE business model as well as the need for such initiatives. Truly impressive."

Biochar is charcoal that can be used for cooking fuel, heat source, carbon capture, or fertilizer additive. Indigenous tribes of the Amazon basin used biochar - known as terra preta (black earth) - as a soil additive. Biochar can improve soil quality by increasing moisture and nutrient retention rates. Most interesting for Planting Empowerment is its ability to increase the effectiveness of organic fertilizer. Fertilizer producers in Panama indicated that there is strong market potential for biochar.

"Some people are hesitant to invest because of how long it takes to produce returns" said Planting Empowerment co-founder Damion Croston, adding "Biochar could be a way to generate earlier income from the plantations, but is also interesting to us because it has a number of different end-uses. The MIT team did a great job of figuring out how to capitalize on biochar production and how we can use it in our own operations."

Planting Empowerment will begin thinning its plantations in 2011, and will set up a small, mobile biochar production unit to process the tree thinnings. Their goal is to work through each stage of the process - from felling the trees to producing finished fertilizer.

Download the full report (PDF)

Planting Empowerment (PE) works to alleviate tropical deforestation and poverty through sustainably managed timber plantations. Founded by four former Peace Corps Volunteers in 2006, PE partners socially and environmentally minded investors with community-based forestry projects in Central America. Since its formation in 2006, Planting Empowerment has quickly grown to become a thought leader in sustainable development and a capable on-the-ground partner. PE currently has 50 acres of mixed tree species under cultivation, with plans to expand to 250 acres in 2011.

Views:	984

Green Living Project update

March 11th, 2010 at 9:46 am

A Green Living Project update from Board Member Chris Meyer...

Of course there was a storm in Bocas del Toro. This meant the Green Living Project’s film team who had been filming there prior would be late. How late? Only the weather gods knew and the filming of our project would have to wait. Luckily, this gave me time to meet with a contractor of USAID to discuss community forestry and conservation based income generation activities. A new grant from USAID was recently awarded to work in the Darien with indigenous peoples and community forestry. A great opportunity for Planting Empowerment to expand our work in the Darien and build off of the small grant project from the UNDP in Arimae. Planting Empowerment will work with indigenous communities to identify appropriate crops that can generate returns in the short term and in an agro-forestry mosaic. This ties into the work we recently just did with MIT to identify how we can generate revenue from the waste thinning produce at year 3 from our plantations. Depending on community familiarity and the ability to secure purchase contracts on the front end, crops such as cacao, plantains, and coffee will probably be selected.

The GLP team arrives at 4:45pm, only 8 hours late. I wouldn’t leave right away for the Darien, but the traffic is so bad in Panama City now, even on the toll road, that we have to wait until 7ish before finally leaving. Driving in the dark on the curvy 2-lane road with bridges that reduce to one lanes and dodging drunk drivers was not my idea of fun. We arrive to Arimae and quickly hang the hammocks in the communal house because of the early morning that awaits us the next day.

Breakfast the next morning we eat at the house of Luciana’s mother. It is a traditional house of the community; raised on stilts, wood plank flooring, thatched roof, no walls, and a cooking pit for a wood fire. Probably about 500 square feet of space. We were lucky enough to get a fried free range egg and patacones, smashed fried green plantains. After breakfast, we met up with Jose Bacurizo, the current cacique, or political chief of the community. He went with us to do some filming in the Friends and Family plantation we planted in 2007 on leased land from the community. We did a quick interview where he explained to the GLP team the various social and environmental benefits of Planting Empowerment’s plantations. Environmentally, he mentioned the use of mixed native species that the community is familiar with and that the management plans includes leaving native vegetation. Many youth from the communities work on the large, institutional mono-culture Teak plantations. On those plantations, they don’t use those techniques, so they are always excited to see species being planted that they are familiar with. Also, because the native vegetation is left, it appears to them more like a forest because there are homes for the animals and they can find some of the plants they use for cultural purposes. Finally, jobs are an important consideration for the community. When the youths have to leave the community to work at the Teak plantations, they lose the social support system and it is not easy to maintain their culture. Because Planting Empowerment is investing in plantations on community land, there are jobs in the community for the youths and they don’t have to leave their homes. All great stuff, straight from the cacique’s mouth for the GLP team to include in their film.

Jose Deago, PE’s forester, accompanied us to the plantation. He explained to the GLP team why PE’s trees still maintained a many of their leaves vs. the mono-culture Teak plantations which lost most of theirs. Again, this was related to the maintenance of natural vegetation in the plantations that ensured a more humid environment. Because of this, they can keep growing (at a slower rate) and start growing quicker when the rainy season begins anew. Deago also explained that by using the mixture of native species and leaving barriers of the native vegetation, it retarded and avoided the spread of various diseases amongst the trees. This not only keeps costs down, but means we don’t have to apply chemical insecticides or fungicides in the plantation.

After perusing the Friends and Family plantation in Arimae, we hurried back for some great pollo guisado, or stewed chicken, at Luciana’s mother’s house.

Views:	269

What's Holding Back Carbon Markets?

March 5th, 2010 at 7:55 am

As Planting Empowerment prepares for future offerings, selling carbon could be an important part of early returns for tree owners. I was recently asked to write a 500 word or less essay on the main obstacles to the expansion of the carbon market, and possible solutions. In researching the topic I read (skimmed actually) EcoSystem Marketplace's State of the Voluntary Carbon Market 2009, which is the source of the statistics. Here is my response...

In 2009 private businesses comprised 66% of the volume of transactions in the voluntary market, but only 29% of those credits were retired. The greatest motivation (35%) for purchasing was resale and investment. If the carbon market is to grow substantially - and businesses are to get serious about using offsets to meet their environmental goals - then compliance markets are necessary. Compliance markets would help set a price on carbon (Nike's recent announcement that it has abandoned purchasing carbon offsets points to this). Regulation is also necessary to establish standards for offset projects (both regulatory and voluntary). One possible alternative to an unwieldy nationwide cap-and-trade bill is the formation of regional compliance markets. A number of these have already formed, including the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and Western Climate Initiative (WCI).

On an individual level, carbon offsetting has remained tepid (2% of total 2009 voluntary market volume). This could be due to a number of things: the recent recession forcing people to cut back on "luxury" items, negative publicity surrounding the carbon market, or because people are already scaling back on their consumption/energy use and feel little motivation to offset. Considering that carbon offsets are optional purchases (i.e. not mandated), they must connect to consumers somehow. Consumers desire a connection with the products they own - they want to part of the the story that that product tells. Purchasing a carbon offset is different in that there is nothing tangible obtained. Indeed, in our minds we are actually purchasing away something. To the extent that most purchasers will never lay eyes on the project that sequestered their ton of carbon, there is no physical evidence of our reduced carbon footprint (aside from a PDF certificate maybe). After purchasing an offset from an online reseller, I was left with the vague sense that I did a good thing. It was underwhelming. To be fair, there are transactions out there that have a more personal connection, but if offsetting is to be widely embraced, then customers must feel some personal involvement with how their emssions are offset. When I know that purchasing an offset helps to conserve a river where I fish, my personal motivation is in line with my environmental goals. An interesting comparison is the DC bag tax that went into effect in January 2010, and is designed largely to fund the cleanup of the Anacostia River. Although more stick than carrot, the outcome of this project may provide some insight into local carbon capture projects.

There are many other considerations. Some are technical - from our perspective leakage is the biggie. Leakage happens when a carbon capture project in one location simply pushes the carbon emitting somewhere else. To mitigate this we stipulate in our contracts that payments to landowners may not be used to destroy more forest. Another idea is to keep a cushion of carbon credits to guard against leakage. Some of the considerations are more philosophical - Do offsets prevent us from living more sustainably? How will developing countries embrace (or not) carbon capture projects? We'll discuss these in upcoming posts.

Views:	269

UNDP Project Update

March 1st, 2010 at 7:50 pm

In Panama the weather is separated into two distinct seasons, the wet season (la lluviosa) and the dry season (la seca) which occurs during the months of December through April. Right now Panama is still in the midst of its dry season, and because of the absence of rain maintenance on our plantations has been minimal. This has given us the opportunity to focus on the UNDP – GEF Small Grants Program project that we’re helping our indigenous partners in Arimae to coordinate.

Kate Kirby, who has done a lot of extensive research on carbon emissions and land cover change with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, completed a participatory mapping workshop in February with community members teaching them how to use GPS units to map coordinates of the forest reserve. This information along with historical knowledge from the community will be used to determine the rate of land cover change over time. When combined with data on carbon storage in different land cover types, this information will give the community the raw data needed to begin the process of estimating its carbon stocks.

Construction of the tree nursery is complete and the seedling trays have finally arrived from the manufacturer in Sweden. This week the community will begin the process of planting the seeds collected from the reserve into the seedling trays. The nursery will produce approximately 9,600 native species saplings which will be ready for transplant during planting season.