Large scale carbon sequestration using smallholder tree crops

Keywords: carbon market, smallholder farmers, tree crops, geospatial intelligence
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Today there are more than 250M smallholder farms in emerging economies, supporting more than 1.5B people. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 30% of these farms cultivate tree crops, such as coffee, cashew, and mango, as a primary or complementary source of income. However, most of these producers are poor and incentives to drive economic and environmental benefits are absent. On the other hand, tree crop afforestation with this segment of producers offers much larger sequestration potential than row crop regenerative practices or traditional tree replanting schemes. With money owned through selling certificate carbon credits plus increased crop income for smallholder farmers, we can create a double incentive for planting and maintaining trees on their current farm plots as long-term carbon sinks. Accomplish this goal will require harnessing the power of satellite imagery, robust field collection, geospatial intelligence, and other advanced technologies to lower the cost of measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) for carbon sequestration by tree crops, and be integrated with digital payment systems that connect growers and carbon credit consumers. We have piloted the program in Mozambique and Cote D’Ivoire in collaboration with TechnoServe who has extensive experience in ground operations to promote market solutions for poverty reduction. Our vision is to develop geospatial technology solutions that will unlock financing for tree planting and rejuvenation for 45M smallholders, increasing farmer incomes by 30% and creating a carbon sink of 880M tonnes of CO2e.