USAID’s partnership with Green Gold Forestry (GGF) represents a sustainable and profitable new way of doing business in the Peruvian Amazon. GGF is demonstrating that it can be more profitable to stop timber extraction and instead build a business based on carbon sequestration and the development of a variety of non-timber forest products that are ecologically sound and sustainable benefiting communities, the forest ecosystem, and the bottom line.
HOW DOES THE ACTIVITY WORK?
USAID is partnering with Green Gold Forestry (GGF) to establish a sustainable management model for forest concessions in Peru’s Amazon rainforest by implementing a no-logging regime across more than 200,000 hectares and transitioning the financial model from logging to a sustainable, multiple revenue stream including environmental services (selling carbon credits to offset carbon emissions), non-timber forest products, ecotourism, and science tourism.
The success of this innovative partnership serves as a model for other private forest concession holders to transition from a timber only financial model to a multi-stream model based around forest conservation, carbon credits, and non-timber forest products.
Due to the extended time horizons of the monitoring and verification requirements of the international carbon market, private sector partnerships such as this one could ensure forest conservation for 20+ years, ensuring sustainability long after the USAID activity has concluded.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
- Improved management and biodiversity conservation of over 200,000 hectares of the Peruvian Amazon.
- Average annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions of 500,000 tons over 20 years.
- Sustainable livelihood activities developed in partnership with up to 14 neighboring communities, including 3,000 people.
- Partnership with additional private sector partners for the establishment of sustainable products and services such as ecotourism, research, and jungle fruit harvesting.
- 54 people were certified as forest guardians, including 27 people from 14 Indigenous communities adjacent to the GGF’s concessions.
- A social baseline was prepared with support from the Federation of Native Communities of the Middle Napo, Curaray and Arabela (FECONAMNCUA) and CEDIA, to further explore the socioeconomic conditions of 14 communities neighboring GGF’s forest concessions.
