Tag: Stand for Trees

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Company News & Updates

New Project Alert! Stand for Trees: South Cardamom

Cambodia, Koh Kong Province, Cardamom National Park, Chipat Village area, Preak Piphot River, Ranger Patrol

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

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General

Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve Is Officially Fully Funded

Arbor partner, Stand for Trees, helps reverse climate change by protecting and expanding existing forests. Partnering with Stand For Trees, Arbor is proud to say that the Rimba Raya project in Borneo, Indonesia is now fully funded. Rimba Raya has fulfilled 100% of the project’s carbon impact fundraising goal,  allowing the forest to be protected for future generations.

Through the project’s lifetime, paper and palm oil industries threatened to develop the Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve, endangering mangrove trees responsible for reducing atmospheric carbon and protecting 120 wildlife species. Mangrove trees are incredibly efficient at removing atmospheric carbon and have become an essential component to the peatland swamp forest’s environmental impact. 

Not only has the project had a positive environmental impact, it has also had a positive social and economic impact. In line with the three pillars of sustainability and the UN sustainable development goals, the project has worked to develop a sustainable fishing industry in the Seruyan river and programs such as clean cookstoves, mobile clinics, micro-financing, and school supplies within the region. When communities focus on successful sustainable  practices, economics and social rewards become granted.  

If you backed the Rimba Raya project through Arbor, you helped conserve a forest sequestering 100 million tons of CO2 in a 30 year period. Arbor’s community contributed to Rimba Raya’s goal and we are tremendously excited that the project has been successful. 

We look forward to working with Stand For Trees on future projects to help reverse climate change! Stay tuned to learn what the next opportunity will be!

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Company News & Updates

Celebrate Arbor Day With Stand For Trees

Happy Arbor Day! 

For our namesake holiday, all of us at Arbor wanted to take a second to express our thanks to the team at Stand For Trees, our initial carbon project partner. It’s their team who oversee and help coordinate projects around the world that directly impact climate change. When you purchase the climate reversal of a tank of gas, a flight or home electrical usage through Arbor, you’re directly funding Stand For Tree’s work around the world!

We started working with their team in fall of 2020 for our  initial prototype launch. We needed a flexible partner who could have significant field impact  and deal with the vagaries and uncertainties of working with a startup — after all, we had no idea whether anyone would use our product when we launched! They’ve been a wonderful partner with us through this journey.

We originally identified three of their projects for our platform that we felt would provide a diverse range of options for our users:

Rimba Raya Orangutan Reserve: Who doesn’t get excited about orangutans? Orangutans + a huge carbon impact was a sure winner for us! This project in Indonesia preserves, protects and helps expand lowland forest covering over 116,000 acres. The mangrove forests in the project are some of the most efficient trees at capturing carbon on the planet. As a bonus, the project is home to more than 120 threatened and endangered species (yes, including orangutans) and provides new, environmentally friendly economic opportunities to the local community. 

This little guy grows up safe while his home helps combat global warming.
You see “jungle”. We see “carbon capture”.

Amazon Valparaiso: When you want to have a huge carbon impact, it’s hard to go wrong with supporting the Amazon. This project in the Amazon basin in Brazil prevents the destruction of 16 million trees, which are projected to capture an additional 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next decade. The area has some of the highest density of biodiversity in the world.

Kasigau Sanctuary: For our third launch project, we wanted something different–and this opportunity to combine carbon impact with African wildlife protection was perfect! Kasigau protects a unique resource–a dryland forest between two national parks in Kenya. Projected to capture millions of additional tonnes of carbon in the coming years, it’s also a critical wildlife corridor for 11,000+ African elephants, giraffes and other threatened species. 

A herd of elephants protected by the Kasigau Sanctuary.

Since our initial launch, we’re proud that our work with Stand for Trees has resulted in the removal of dozens of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. We look forward to expanding our impact and working with on other impactful projects in the future!