Ashley Grant – hazel™

After a 12-month delay, it is officially Olympic season! Our team at Arbor is already enjoying the festivities!

As we enjoy the competition though, we would like to highlight one specific country that is participating: Kiribati, located in the South Pacific. The country has a population of 119,000 and will be sending three athletes to represent it to Tokyo. Kiribati has been called a “drowning paradise” due to its increasing rise in sea level each year. It is believed Kiribati will be the first country to be completely submerged due to climate change.

The effects of climate change have become increasingly apparent all over the world, but Kiribati faces an immediate threat. Even if all global climate policy goals are met, Kiribati will likely be uninhabitable by 2100. To prepare, the government has begun to purchase land in Fiji in order to move inhabitants of Kiribati when the time comes.

As you know, we here at Arbor like to be a part of the solution. As a part of the Arbor Saves Summer campaign, we have decided to be Kiribati’s (unofficial) sponsor! We will be offsetting the climate impact of their athlete’s travel to Tokyo, approximately 22 hours of air travel total for the three athletes who are representing Kiribati: Lataisi Mwea, Kinaua Biribo, and Ruben Katoatau.

We know that eliminating the climate impact of their travel to the games doesn’t make up for the destruction of their native homeland, but this is a small token of support from Arbor as Kiribati faces the direct effects of climate change. Kiribati serves as a lesson to the very real impacts of climate change and a reminder to do our part while we still can.

Do you want to get involved? There are non-profits that are trying to help the people of Kiribati grapple with the impacts of climate change, like the Kiribati Project, with the goal of supporting Kiribati citizens. More broadly, make sure to eliminate the impact of your negative climate actions with Arbor — each time you purchase the elimination of a tank of gas, your home’s electrical usage, or a flight, you’re funding the removal of carbon from the atmosphere, which helps the residents of Kiribati and all of us reverse the climate damage we’ve done.

Learn more about the uncertain future of Kiribati here.

We are excited to introduce our newest project in partnership with Stand for Trees: South Cardamom based in Trapeang Rung, Cambodia! This project not only has a significant climate impact but also focuses on endangered species, biodiversity, and economic development.

Southern Cardamom is a great project option for Arbor users because it’s the perfect successor to the Rimba Raya project that successfully completed a few weeks ago. Like Rimba Raya, it focuses on an Asian tropical rainforest and has a significant wildlife conservation component.

Where this project excels though is its community impact–with thousands of local inhabitants living in or near poverty in the surrounding community, we wanted a project that focused on the economic opportunity too. The work at Southern Cardamom provides hundreds of high-paying jobs to the local community, scholarships for higher education, and through ecotourism creates a new way for the community to monetize this valuable native resource–with a focus on conservation.

The area being preserved by this project is immense. Southern Cardamom protects approximately 1.2M acres of lowland tropical rainforest in Cambodia’s Cardamom Rainforest landscape. The Cardamoms are a critical part of the Indo-Burma global biodiversity hotspot–one of the planet’s highest conservation priorities. These forests are threatened by illegal logging for high-value timber, fuel for Cambodia’s garment factories, and deforestation by outsiders for land sales.

This project addresses these threats by supporting local communities and local government with protected area management, law enforcement and by helping to develop alternative livelihoods that depend on forests and biodiversity.

Biodiversity Impact

The Cardamom landscape is the region’s largest climate regulator and carbon sink, critical habitat for countless species, and, with 22 major waterways, an important watershed. This project supports a team of 98 rangers and 25 anti-poaching community members that patrol the forests and monitor activities.

Endangered Species Impact

The project is home to more than 50 endangered species such as the Asian forest elephant, Asiatic black bear, sun bear, pileated gibbon, Bengal slow tories, mainland clouded leopard and fishing cat, as well as the critically endangered Sunda pangolin, Siamese crocodile, Southern river terrapin, and giant ibis.

Community Impact

Around 16,000 people, many of whom are below the poverty line, live in the areas surrounding the project. Southern Cardamom is providing scholarships for higher education through a community fund; helping to ensure permanent land access for all community members and expanding its award-winning community-based ecotourism projects.

Emissions Impact

Southern Cardamom will prevent the emissions of 110 million tonnes of CO2 over its 30-yr lifetime, validated and verified under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). It has also achieved CCB Gold status for exceptional climate and biodiversity benefits.

To support this project you may add your email to our waitlist for the Arbor app below:

https://gethazelapp.com