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Help Fight Deforestation in the Bolivian Amazon with the Arbolivia Cooperative

Amid the horror stories of large-scale fires in the Amazon over the last few years, there is news of a successful move to restore the forest and prevent or reduce the damaging use of slash and burn farming, which may have been at the root of many of the fires this year. For the past 11 years around a thousand peasant farmers in the Bolivian Amazon have been planting millions of trees on their land as part of a scheme to reduce slash and burn agriculture in the Amazon rain forest and restore the canopy.

Arbolivia is the trading style of The Cochabamba Project, a not-for-profit co-operative society originally co-founded in Sheffield to benefit the poor settler communities of the Cochabamba Tropics. It now has over 500 members and has expanded its remit to cover 4 of Bolivia’s lowland “departments”, with a team of 26 local staff, who train and support farmers in sustainable forest and land management.

Each farmer plants about a hectare of native Bolivian trees, which will eventually be felled for timber, together with around 200 fruit trees or cash crops such as coffee or cocoa, and an additional area for pure conservation. Unlike in large commercial forestry, the species are also selected for their other qualities such as: restoring soil structure, health and biodiversity, controlling soil water and providing vital shade for valuable, tender crops. Around 20% of the least promising stands are removed periodically to give the most promising one access to more light, water and nutrients.

Unlike in commercial forestry, regrowth from the severed stumps and falling seeds is encouraged, ensuring that permanent forest cover will be maintained even when the last of the original trees have been harvested.

Farmers are also encouraged to plant cover crops such as beans or peanuts, which also help suppress weeds whilst enriching the poor soils with nitrogen.

Arbolivia provides them with not only the tree saplings but also the equipment to clear the ground where necessary and to prune the trees and thin out the unsuccessful ones. This whole process enables the farmers to continue working the same piece of land and improving it rather than exhausting one section and moving on to burn the trees on another. As a result, not only is there a significant amount of carbon captured directly through their plantings but it avoids the release into the atmosphere of the carbon dioxide which would have been produced if the farmers continued to engage in slash and burn agriculture.

Around 3000 acres have been planted under the British/Dutch-inspired project so far, mainly with the leguminous native tree, tejeyeque, but in mixed plantations with a variety of native trees.

I got involved with the Cochabamba project about 9 years ago because I was concerned about the continuing destruction of the Amazon, and I visited Bolivia two years ago with a small group of members to see things for myself. I was really impressed with the commitment of both the technical staff and the farmers themselves, not only to planting and maintaining the trees, but also to the natural world in general, and we were able to see quite a variety of birds and animals in the area, including the largest rodent in the world, the capybara.

Maintaining the trees properly until they reach maturity is an expensive business, and the project has survived numerous threats to its existence, notably the collapse of the carbon credit market and the Bolivian government’s principled opposition to carbon credits, which the project relied upon to subsidise the cost of tree maintenance and farmer training. Financial planning isn’t always easy either in a country where the government is able from one day to the next to decree a triple salary for the month of December, as happened in 2017.

The project has recently been restructured to enable it to survive for the next six or eight years when the first trees reach maturity and the timber can be harvested, at which point the farmers’ hopes of a better life for their children can be realised, and the project can achieve the financial security to continue planting and to expand. Efforts are being made to develop other sources of income such as a collaboration with Eco K, a Bolivian company producing ecologically sourced charcoal for the rapidly growing market in the Bolivian cities. Meantime Arbolivia has managed to continue operating thanks to the dedication and sacrifices of its staff, the ongoing financial commitment of the society’s members and a number of funders, notably Netherlands-based Trees for All, the German NGO Prima Klima, UK-based Tree-nation and Zero Mission of Sweden. There have been numerous fundraising efforts by the Cooperative’s members, too, and these will no doubt continue to be needed. The co-operative is currently engaged in a specific crowdfunding effort to raise funds to develop the commercial side of the project. To get further information about the project and access this funding vehicle, go to https://bit.ly/ArBo-Real

At a global level of course, without government help of some kind (ideally a significant contribution from the developed world), the scale on which the fight against deforestation is being carried on is comparatively puny. And yet the costs of establishing a practical programme to defend the rainforest are relatively low. If successful, the not-for-profit Arbolivia project will have lifted some 6,000 Bolivians out of poverty on a budget of around half a million dollars each year — less than £100 a head. Scaling up these figures, an annual budget of just $20 million would do the same for 240,000 Bolivians while at the same time protecting the rainforest with its vast wealth of flora and fauna.

But for the moment, Arbolivia is setting an example of what can be done, and it depends on people like you to continue and develop its work. We will all benefit!