Grow Trees and Offset Carbon with African Farmers

World Rainforest Day was started in 2017, with the hope that we take time to collectively recognize the preciousness and the importance of our world’s rainforests and take action to protect and preserve them. This year, World Rainforest Day is being celebrated Monday, June 22, and it is truly worth celebrating everywhere because rainforests and forests all over the world are vital for our ecosystem, climate system, and human and animal livelihoods.

Extensive deforestation is happening around the world. Deforestation for mining, logging, and animal agricultural purposes contribute to 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, which is a significant contributor to climate change. Even in Northern Africa and Morocco, deforestation and human impact are high, largely due to the growing population and increasing land conversion for agriculture, a large sector of the economy. On one hand, agriculture (especially animal agriculture) is a primary reason for forest degradation, soil erosion, overexploitation of land, and hence 20% greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. However, agriculture can have a positive impact on the environment, if done environmentally- and climate-consciously. Studies suggest that planting a billion hectares of trees--more than half a trillion trees--can capture approximately 205 gigatons of carbon, reduce atmospheric carbon (a greenhouse gas) by roughly 25%, and mitigate, to some extent, negative effects of climate change.

While reforestation can help reduce our carbon footprint, this is only a fraction of the climate change “solution.” There are many ways to help the earth, the environment, and inhabitants, and educating ourselves is an integral first step. We need to be more aware of the long term effects of our personal decisions--from the food we eat and the products we buy--and we need to keep large corporations and industries accountable for their role in contributing to climate change. As consumers, we hold the bargaining power to make immense and sustainable change. We can consciously choose how to spend our time and our money to best have a positive impact on the environment, and choosing to support locally, sustainably grown food and farmers is another step in the right direction.

Since its inception in 2000, the High Atlas Foundation (HAF) has wholeheartedly put sustainable development and Moroccan communities at the center of its mission, implementing local initiatives in areas of sustainable agriculture, education, health, women’s and youth empowerment, and capacity-building. Growing trees, registering carbon credits, and certifying organic have been some of the many important ways HAF has consciously put the earth, its inhabitants, and its future generations at the forefront of sustainable development. Since 2003, HAF and communities have planted more than 4 million seeds and trees with farming families and schools, and approximately 10,000 household incomes are impacted (60,000 rural people). Additionally, HAF partners with various government, civil, and private agencies in Morocco and internationally that also prioritize reforestation to create connections and to assist Moroccan communities. The HAF-Ecosia partnership is planting 2.4 million seeds in two years from 2019-2021, which will greatly contribute to Moroccan livelihoods. By allowing the Moroccan people to reap the fruits of combined efforts of many actors’ labor, sustainable agriculture goes far beyond the fields--supporting the environment and livelihoods, as well as building relationships between the people, the government, and various intercultural groups.

The people and our environment are intricately interconnected. Our actions have the power to create a sustainable future that takes into account both the positive and negative impacts we can have on our environment. All people need to be aware of how their actions can hurt or help the earth. Educating yourself, donating money or time to rainforest protectors, and spreading the word is a huge step in protecting the earth and its rainforests, because our actions--conscious or not--impact our world, and people all over the world more than we often realize.

For decades, climate change has been left to scientists – and they, to their credit, have given us the strong indication we need that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human decisions and actions. What clearly appears to us to be the most pressing problem is caused by people, with impacts on people, and must be solved by people. The impacts are as much social as physical, and the solutions as much legal as technical, but yet the world is haltingly working on balance and justice toward the climate. This lets us ask the following questions: Do we have enough solutions to get rid of this problem? And do we have the sufficient ideas to achieve climate justice?

The world is moving forward in terms of scientific and technological progress, yet in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and unlimited ones to come, we are still facing a great urgency, one of the most critical items on the agenda of modern life. Climate change is astonishingly impacting our everyday lives in many ways. Climate change is affecting human health, infrastructure, and transportation systems, as well as energy, food, and water supplies while we still seek the right means to figure out solutions.

While we are working on an established and common agreement, all nations join in a common cause, undertaking ambitious , such as keeping the global temperature rise this century within only 1.5-2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. We can work to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. We need to look simultaneously at the role other legal instruments from the fields of human rights and laws can play, seeking to fill out the uncertain relationship between disengaged local actors and global leaders.

Every one of us should have a sense that climate change is not just a climate issue but a deeply-rooted development issue, an economic issue, a rights issue, and a legal issue. Therefore, any approach to finding a legal and just solution needs to be based in all relevant aspects of the law at the national, regional, and international levels. Such an approach allows all civil society sectors and individuals to submit their proposals and express their ideas to their governments.

As we all should believe that a global solution is not just an issue for decision makers working at the international levels, the that will feed the changes we need are coming from local communities, entrepreneurs, women, young people, small-scale farmers, researchers, scientists, town planners and those who hold indigenous knowledge. This requires a strong commitment and enduring confidence with locals in order to support their actions in implementing environmental initiatives and to empower them to rely on participatory planning as a principle – one that wonderfully accelerates addressing any issue in a collective way. More importantly, the fundamental partners, who should not only be technically supporting this approach to make it successful but also financially standing alongside these local communities’ actors and investing directly in them, are the major companies, especially those who directly contribute to pollution.

The fact is that the current climate issue seems far from solved, but the truth is that we have quick,efficient ways to do so, and they are reflected in the following steps.

The world cannot respond adequately to climate change unless we give those most affected a voice, listen to their solutions, and empower them to act. The very best way do so is community planning and participatory approach meetings that perfectly reflect what they carry in their hearts. We also have to transform our current economic system into one based on low-carbon production and consumption, so that we can create inclusive sustainable development. Moreover, we have to deal with risks posed by climate change that present a serious threat to nature and people, now and in the future; invest in sensible solutions; and build local environmental initiatives and programs uniting all societal sectors in designing and managing them. In addition to that, strong legal frameworks can provide certainty to ensure transparency, longevity, credibility, and effective enforcement of climate and related policies. These are necessary steps to protect those people most at risk from the impacts of climate change.

Quote: Trees cannot plant themselves, and that is a job opportunity. Therefore, this will address social, development and environmental problems.