Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Dear donors and partners,

We hope you are well, and for those of you currently experiencing heat waves, we send cooling breezes from the forest.

As we continue our work of seed collection, nursery expansion and caring for the crop of seedlings that we are readying for the planting season in October/November, parts of the world are suffering from record heatwaves. The Pacific Northwest of the US has been experiencing temperatures 20C higher than normal. Pavement is buckling, trolley car cables are melting, wildfires are breaking out, snows are melting. Temperatures this week hit record highs across Europe and even into the Arctic Circle.

The climate won't wait! Which is why we are redoubling our efforts to scale up our planting. Do more and better. Hire a new forestry coordinator. Keep spreading the word through our education courses.

Planting trees by itself won't solve the climate crisis. Global citizens need to come together to curb emissions, modify our consumption and spending habits, and start the great clean up– employing nature based solutions while there is still time.

Nature based solutions. What are they and how do they affect the climate?

Sustainably managing and restoring damaged ecosystems. So, whether its food security, climate change, water security, human health, disaster risk or economic development, nature can help us find a way.

The most cost-effective, most efficient, most scalable way of cleaning up carbon from our atmosphere is through planting trees. And growing numbers of people across the world are getting the message. 

Here at Iracambi, and thanks to your amazing support, we´re on the case. And as you can see, we've spent the past couple of weeks on intensive seed collection in the forest. As you know, this is only the beginning of the tree journey - collecting, identifying, sorting, cleaning and then germinating and planting. 

A nature-based solution. And we´re doing it together. Thank you! 

 with love from Alfredo, Deivid, Averaldo and the Iracambi Tree Planters. 

Dear donors, 

This week we want to introduce you to one of our local farmers Fagner – who is setting up an on-farm tree nursery under our Forests4Water program.

Fagner is one of the Iracambi family. His mother Carminha used to be the Iracambi Center cook until (with Iracambi encouragement, and with some trepidation on her part,) she branched out and opened her own restaurant. Today she runs a catering business, and even in the midst of covid, she supplies quality food to people in the neighborhood - anything from take out lunches to celebration birthday cakes and outdoor barbecues.  And, equally importantly, she models success to women in the local community.

Fagner is one of Carminha´s sons, and for a time he was in charge of the Iracambi forest nursery. But he really wanted to emulate his mother and set up his own business. So after working with Iracambi’s experimental coffee plot and learning techniques of producing quality coffee, he set up his own business and, as you can see, he made a go of it!

And now he's expanding his business to supply tree seedlings for reforestation, and this week our team worked with him to set up his tree nursery. And that was all in the family too – our Field Coordinator Alfredo is married to Fagner’s sister Thais.

That´s community engagement for you! Success breeds success, and as the word spreads, there´s increasing interest among some of the local farmers in incorporating a small tree nursery into the farm economy. And nursery manager Deivid has a waiting list of famers wanting us to help reforest on their properties.

Between us we really are saving forests and changing lives. Thank you for being such a valued part of it!

with love from Alfredo and the Iracambi team 

PS This week we'll start interviewing for our new Forestry Coordinator. Stay tuned! 

Good afternoon, dear donors, 

And we hope you are doing well?

In our last letter we took you behind the scenes to show you a little of the nuts and bolts of our forestry program. And today we'd like to tell you what's been happening as the Forests4Water team goes back to the classroom - for a few hours at least! 

Thanks to the generosity of all our wonderful donors, (including you,) as well as the wise counsel of our forestry mentor Venkat, the hard work of our forestry team here at Iracambi, and the opportunity to devote a few hours to expanding our knowledge, our program is growing and improving by leaps and bounds, and we are learning more every day.

As you know, our forestry program involves activities year-round, but from time to time it´s important for us to take time out from work in the nursery and in the field, trade tips and learn from our colleagues in the reforestry world. So yesterday we joined a super interesting workshop given the the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact on using GIS, drones and drone-mounted techniques for forest monitoring. We emerged with our heads spinning, and burning to try our hands at some of the techniques they shared with us. 

In parallel, and during a week when three of the world´s major oil companies have found themselves faced with the necessity of taking a serious stand in terms of curbing emissions, we´re learning all we can about the carbon market, under the guidance of a pro bono consultancy, along with a couple of long -time friends and mentors with vast experience in the field.

And just to complete our happiness, we are today starting a search for a new addition to our forestry team: specifically someone who can manage our data collection and analysis, assist our GIS manager in producing maps and reports, and collaborate with the team in the forest nursery and in the field.

So that´s the news from Iracambi, and we hope you are enjoying our updates on the amazing things that your support is making possible.

Thank you!

Look after yourselves, and we´ll talk soon,

with love from the soon-to-be-expanded forestry team at Iracambi!

Links:

• Carbon credits for beginners

Dear donors, 

I hope you are doing well, and we want to send you all a big thank you for your support of our programs and take you backstage and show you a little of the nuts and bolts of our reforestry program!

You’re probably already familiar with our frontline activities - Alfredo and his team visiting the farms, checking on the baby trees, weeding and strimming the grass that threatens to choke them, or giving them a dose of fertilizer to help them face the end of the rainy season.

Plus what Deivid is up to in the nursery – making new seedling tables, filling the bags with the perfect mixture of soil and compost, germinating the seeds he has collected in the forest, watering the seedlings, and checking on the ten community nurseries – whose owners are inordinately proud of them! 

In this letter, we´d like to give you an idea of how we are using your donations – for which we are extremely grateful!

First, let us explain that the biggest project expense is labor. Land preparation, planting and maintenance requires lots of hard work and sweat equity, and everyone who works with us comes from the local community so your donations, as well as helping us reforest, are providing plenty of employment! 

And, even better, our peak season will begin in August when we start visiting the planting sites and doing the preliminary clearing and hole digging. This coincides nicely with the end of the coffee harvest, when local farmers will be glad of extra employment. Another important point is that in our annual reforestry budgeting we include labor costs for two years, since every tree planted will require two years maintenance.  

In the first quarter of this year we received in GlobalGiving donations a total of R$255,315 or USD$48, 533. Total project expenses were R$43,000 or USD 8,174. This left us with a quarterly balance of USD$40,359. Project expenses will increase from July when we shall be hiring a second project manager, and even more sharply from August when we shall be using casual labor to start preparing for the planting season.

One of our main upcoming expenses will be acquiring a suitable used vehicle to transport equipment and people. Up to now we`ve been using whatever transport is available, but we really need to have a pickup truck. Vehicles in Brazil are expensive, and we estimate this will cost us around $15,000.  So we are budgeting carefully to ensure that funds will be available at the right time!  

So, dear donors, thank you for coming backstage with us, and thank you even more for your generous support. We`re on a long term commitment together, caring for the trees you have helped us plant, making seedlings to plant later in the year, and planning for the future.  

As the Chinese proverb says, "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

Be safe, friends, and we´ll talk again soon,

with love from Alredo, Deivid and the Iracambi team

.. 

Links:

• F4W expenses Jan - March 2021

Good morning dear donors and supporters, and we hope you are doing well?

First of all we want to thank you all once again for your amazing support to our project during Climate Action Week! Thanks to you, we raised well over seven thousand dollars which is a huge help towards planting those 55000 trees we keep raving about!

And this week, as our team is working away to enlarge the forest nursery and make seedlings for the next planting season, we want to tell you about one aspect of our planting program that may be new to you.

It´s about community forest nurseries. We're working with local farmers helping them set up small forest nurseries, which is quite a radical cultural change, since space taken up by forests has traditionally been seen as space that could be better used for planting coffee or pasturing cattle.

But attitudes are changing, first the farmers noticed that their water supplies were getting stressed. Then they asked us if we could help them reforest on their water catchment areas. And when they saw the results, they started to think in terms of raising a few seedlings themselves.

Our aim, over time, is to have a small tree nursery become an integral part of the farm economy - just like having a vegetable garden, or keeping a few chickens or a pig. So here's a picture of Deilson discussing his future forest nursery with our former nursery manager and long time advisor on all things forest nursery-related.

Exciting times, right? And we're so happy that you are a part of it all. We simply couldn't do it without you! 

Please look after yourselves and we´ll talk soon, 

with love from Alfredo, Deivid and the Iracambi team  

PS You might like to check out this video about our neighbor Adão  When his spring dried up, he was the first local farmer to ask us to help him plant trees in his water catchment area - even though he didn´t really believe it would help. 

It did! 

Links:

• Adao