August 20, 2014
Ecomapuá Amazon REDD Project generates 1,572,478 SOCIALCARBON VCUs on first verification
Brazil has more than 470 million hectares of forest, covering 60.14% of the whole territory and putting the country in second place among the nations with the largest area of forest in the world. However, Brazil was also previously the country with the highest levels of forest loss, having 3,090,000 ha deforested between 2000 and 2005. The expansion of agriculture and livestock has had great contribution to this high rate of deforestation, which is concentrated in the northern part of the country, where Amazon is located.
The Ecomapuá Amazon REDD Project is located in the western part of the Marajó Island, in the State of Pará, Brazil. Marajó is the country’s richest region in terms of waterways, and has a long history of colonization by subsistence farmers. The area has an extremely valuable ecosystem for many species, especially birds.
The project was conceived by the companies Bio Assets Assets Ativos Ambientais and Ecompuá Conservação Ltda still in 2002 and has now been approved in accordance with the SOCIALCARBON Standard and VCS, according to RINA’s independent audit. The role for developing the two certification standards project’s documents was designated to the Brazilian consultancy Sustainable Carbon – Projetos Ambientais Ltda.
The project’s main goal is to avoid unplanned deforestation of an area of 86,269.84 ha. During VCS’s monitoring period, which accounts carbon emissions, the project avoided around 3,350 ha of deforestation, resulting in 1,572,478 tCOe in emissions reduction during the monitoring period from January 2003 to December 2012.
In addition to environmental improvements, the project provides social and economic benefits to the surrounding community, evaluated by the SOCIALCARBON Standard. Within the project, there is an area dedicated to the communities containing a school, a church, a meeting space and a seedlings nursery. A stakeholder local consultation was also conducted, during which the Ecomapuá Company’s actions were discussed with the community. On occasion, the Ecomapuá proposed to fund three scholarships in Universities of the State of Pará for the best community’s students and to donate building materials for a new nursery to produce seedlings. A lecture was also given to the Environmental Management course in UNOPAR – Brief, seeking to expose carbon credits projects and raise awareness about forest conservation in the Amazon.
We asked Lap Chan – managing partner of the project proponents companies – about the adoption of the SOCIALCARBON Standard and he said “the SOCIALCARBON is an efficient tool to manage and demonstrate the co-benefits of our community-based project to the market”.
This is the first REDD project with participation of SOCIALCARBON Standard, and we are very excited to be part of this initiative that not only protects the Amazon forest, one of the major environmental heritage sites, but also encourages communities’ social and economic development. This is a very important step for the SOCIALCARBON Team, and we hope this success leverages many other initiatives!