Story

A convergence of ideas about sustainable development, migratory deforestation, land tenure, and impact investing.

Sustainable forestry can help alleviate tropical deforestationEconomic development and the rainforest

Planting Empowerment’s founders are former Peace Corps volunteers who lived and worked with subsistence farmers and indigenous communities in Panama. During our time there we saw the drastic environmental effects of unchecked deforestation: species depletion, soil erosion and the emission of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. During the dry season, trucks loaded with enormous logs rumbled out of Panama’s Darien province en route to Panama City for processing. This is still happening.

Initially, it was frustrating knowing that our communities played a significant role in this. But as we spent more time “living the issues”, we came to realize that tropical deforestation is more than an environmental issue. People depend on the rainforest for food, shelter and income. Preservation comes second to their needs. One community member in Nuevo Paraiso said it best:

“We have to eat.”  

We knew that any attempt to mitigate tropical deforestation would have to start with their economic needs.

Financing challenges

At the same time, we were also seeing that well-intentioned conservation and reforestation projects did not change land management practices. Lack of financing and long-term technical support were the main reasons for this failure. Based on this experience and the analyses we conducted, impact investing represented the best funding mechanism to sustain a social enterprise.  

On the opposite end of the spectrum were the monoculture tree plantation businesses. While they lacked the community focus that the reforestation projects had at their core, they were thriving enterprises with investment as their engine. During our time in Panama we witnessed forestry businesses purchase thousands of hectares of degraded land from locals. This divorced the farmers from the long-term economic benefits of the plantations and encouraged migratory deforestation. We wanted to keep more of the profits in the hands of the people.

But how?

An idea emerges

Land leasing is common in agricultural communities in Panama. The leases provide short-term income to the tenant and promote land tenure, while keeping money in communities. Believing this could be applied to longer term leases for forestry, we talked with community members in the villages about this approach.

Their support of the idea led to long-term land leases for the 25 acre Friends and Family project in 2007, and the 25 acre Adelante project in 2008.

Full speed ahead

Today, the story continues. Planting Empowerment is building on the success of the Friends and Family and Adelante funds in order to partner with more Panamanians, plant more native-species trees, offset more carbon, and raise more investor capital for sustainable forestry.

We hope you’ll be part of that story.