From Teams for Nature’s inception in 2022 and up until now, all of the trees funded by our partners were planted across different sites in Indonesia, in various regions operated through our partnership with the Indonesian government.
It had always been our aim to bring us all closer to the positive impact that we’re having, but having our members’ trees spread thinly across Indonesia, meant we couldn’t see our impact growing. There wouldn’t be somewhere that our team could go to visit, to see a forest growing.
As of February 2023, though, we have established a designated planting location, for Teams for Nature’s members to support. These connected sites are situated north of Baluran National Park, along the coast in Eastern Java.
Community involvement
Our efforts is not just about paying for somebody to plant trees; it’s about supporting community-based restoration project: one that adheres to the highest levels of responsible reforestation practices, and incorporates local people at every level.
The projects hire local people to grow, plant, and guard to maturity the trees planted through funding from our community – on a massive scale. This methodology results in multiple positive socioeconomic and environment impacts through helping to provide reliable income to local Indonesian people.
Why Mangroves?
In January 2020, a joint letter from 11,000 scientists declared a climate emergency. In it, signatories had singled-out restoring mangroves as a major natural climate solution which “contribute[s] greatly to sequestration of atmospheric CO2”.
Mangrove forests can store four times as much carbon as a tropical rainforest, and they also provide crucial ecosystem services like safe habitats for tropical fish, the cycling of nutrients, and highly-effective coastal storm protection.
We also know that coastal wetland restoration – including mangrove forest restoration – is a key climate solution as listed by Project Drawdown. They list coastal wetland restoration as one of the top 100 solutions which will enable us to reverse global warming.
Here’s what Drawdown have to say about this particular solution:
Along the fringes of coasts, where land and ocean meet, lie the world’s salt marshes, mangroves, and sea grasses. These coastal wetland ecosystems are found on every continent except Antarctica.
They provide nurseries for fish, feeding grounds for migratory birds, a first line of defence against storm surges and floodwaters, and natural filtration systems that boost water quality and recharge aquifers. Relative to their land area, they also sequester huge amounts of carbon in plants aboveground and in roots and soils below.
Coastal wetlands can store five times as much carbon as tropical forests over the long term, mostly in deep wetland soils. The soil of mangrove forests alone may hold the equivalent of more than two years of global emissions—22 billion tons of carbon, much of which would escape if these ecosystems were lost.
Stay tuned
Stay tuned for more updates from our Indonesian planting site.
If you haven’t joined our community yet, feel free to get in touch – and ensure your business is having a positive impact on the world.
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