Individuals can reduce their environmental footprints through retirement of carbon offsets. Contributions will be pooled to fund community initiatives to protect and replant forests and demonstrate positive social impacts.
Brazil is home to over half of the world's forests. Millions of hectares are deforested annually due to logging and agriculture, producing 60% of Brazil's GHG emissions. Loss of Amazon and Atlantic Forests also threatens over 10 million people who depend on forests for their food, water and livelihoods. To stem the cycle, investments are needed in projects that demonstrate the value of standing forests and yield local economic benefits through sale of agro-forestry products and carbon credits.
Mata no Peito will provide funding to projects that provide payments to forest-based communities for protecting and replanting forests. The payments will save lands from being deforested and give incentive to forest restoration, stemming the destructive cycle.
Mata no Peito aims to protect and replant the equivalent of millions of soccer fields of Brazilian forests while providing incomes for hundreds of forest-based communities through the sale of carbon credits and sustainable agroforestry products. The funded projects will serve as replicable models, while also reducing over one million tons of CO2 and maintaining habitat for diverse species of flora and fauna in some of the most biodiversity rich areas in the world.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
