We create forests in Guatemala to sustain peasant communities as they resist the effects of the climate crisis and the oppression of the powerful.
In Guatemala deforestation is first of all a social problem: the poorest families have no resources to farm the land they live on and fall prey to land grabbing by multinationals. We turn that mechanism around. We give the trees to the farming families, who plant them in agroforestry systems that generate food and income: the fruit trees, handed over already grafted, bear fruit within three years, and many farmers start micro-businesses selling that fruit at the market. We provide training and technical skills in sustainable land management, so the impact lasts and communities reach self-sufficiency.
Fires set to clear the ground for monocultures and pasture threaten Guatemala's forests, among them the Maya Biosphere, the most important tropical forest in Central America. The forests we plant in Petén hold back soil erosion and retain water, prevent landslides and floods, keep the land fertile and regulate climate and rainfall. They defend the region's biodiversity and natural habitats, and absorb the CO2 that human activity keeps piling into the atmosphere. Reforesting here means bringing an ecosystem back to life, not lining up trees in rows.
The CO₂ estimate is per project, not per single tree. Method and technical values are in the project page, Transparency tab.