Offset your CO₂ emissions while doing good for Tanzanian farmers!

FairCarbon4Us offers you the chance to address a global challenge and help small-scale farmers around Morogoro and the Uluguru Mountains at the same time! With your contribution, farmers will plant trees, thus mitigating climate change. The farmers will receive payments for their efforts, directly increasing their income. At the same time, these trees will help farmers protect their environment, increase their productivity, and reduce soil erosion. Win-win!

Facts:

People living in industrialized countries emit on average between 4 (Switzerland) and 17 (USA) metric tonnes of CO₂ per person and year (data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC (2014)). The factors that contribute are typically broken down to food, home, travel, and consumption. Typically, two great ways to reduce your carbon footprint (the sum of all your emissions) are mitigation – exchange carbon emitting activities for ones that don’t emit, like riding a bike instead of using a car – and reduction, e.g. turning off electronic devices when you don’t use them. But some things simply cannot be avoided. This is where we come in!

Our Projects:

1. Food forests: We support our farmers to plant and manage fruit trees for additional income and other species for feeding livestock, medicinal use or fire wood.
2. Spicy carbon: Spices yield high prices on markets. They are a valuable source of income.
3. Agroforestry and biochar: There are methods to produce biochar from branches of Gliricidia sepium trees without cutting the tree.

Learn more here.

How does our concept work?

In contrast to many carbon offsetting programs, we strive for a high level of biodiversity. This approach requires some research, because there is not much information available on different combinations of trees we strive for, especially in the peculiar environment of the Uluguru Mountains and the lands at their feet. How fast do they grow? How wide do their trunks become? How much carbon do they sequester? This necessity of research is the reason why we do not yet offer “CO₂-Bundles” in which you pay for sequestration of a certain amount of sequestered carbon. Instead, we’re “selling” individual trees. For a fee of USD 6 per tree, we will instruct a farmer to plant that tree. Over time, we will gain more and more data to gradually expand our offers to you and everybody else!

What happens with the money?

The USD 6 per tree are split up into three parts:

• USD 2 go directly into the farmer’s pocket. Tree management needs work, so farmers are compensated for their efforts. This is a direct increase of their income.
• USD 2 are used for training courses. We train farmers in various techniques such as nursery management, pest control, and others. The knowledge obtained through these trainings also greatly benefits the farmers.
• The remaining USD 2 are used for monitoring and evaluation of the projects. We ensure that the trees are indeed planted and well managed so you have a guarantee that they stay in the fields. We count and measure them and include the data into our research to learn and improve.

FairCarbon4Us guarantees that farmers additionally plant indigenous trees which are specially rewarded. This is a unique approach which protects the biodiversity in Tanzania.

In case you want to buy trees please see here how to proceed.