February 20, 2021   |   By Will Sheldon, Commercial Director

Celebrating 10 years of reforestation with impact

Components / Icons / TR Arrow

February 20, 2021   |   By Will Sheldon, Commercial Director

Celebrating 10 years of reforestation with impact

A decade of powerful impact


After another record year in 2020, Taking Root is celebrating 10 years of reforestation with smallholder farmers. As 2020 came to a close, Taking Root found itself celebrating multiple milestones. It marked the year that we planted our 10,000,000th tree and issued our 1,000,000th carbon credit with Plan Vivo (if you want to read more about Taking Root’s activities in 2020, you can download our 2020 Annual Report here). We’re also happy to announce that over 2,000 hectares of underused land was reforested in 2020, more than double the amount reforested the year prior. Taking Root has come a long way since registering its CommuniTree project in Nicaragua with Plan Vivo in 2010, now working in 9 different countries across all 3 tropical continents, and we are more ambitious than ever to amplify our impact going into the next decade.

Taking Root farmer plants tree with her son
Farmer Dora Maria Salgado plants a tree with her son in the Somoto region.

Taking Root started with an idea of how to reforest land with smallholder farmers. Using carbon financing to incentivize farmers to reforest underused areas of their farms, the CommuniTree project began in 2010 with only a handful of farmers. It has since expanded to become Nicaragua’s largest reforestation initiative, establishing a best-practice model for reforestation with smallholder farmers. That model has evolved as our impact has grown, but the underlying principles of using science-based methods and putting farmers first that have allowed for its success have remained unchanged.

The root of our model has been based around maximizing the value that forests can bring smallholder farmers. The 6,000+ hectares reforested over the past decade have generated thriving local forest economies, all bringing new forms of income to farmers. On top of that, the 10,000,000 trees planted have been steadily removing carbon from the atmosphere, mitigating climate change. As the farmers that we work with are often the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, forests are essential to maintain their livelihoods.

Farmer Horacio Suarez Cruz on his farm in Parsila, San Juan de Limay
Farmer Horacio Suarez Cruz on his farm in Parsila, San Juan de Limay

The journey has not always been easy. When Taking Root first began planting trees with smallholder farmers there was scepticism from both local communities and funders. The year 2010 was very different from 2020 and natural climate solutions were not widely recognised as one of the key solutions to the climate crisis as they are today. At the same time, local communities had grown up with agricultural practices where removing trees, not growing them, was common practice. We are indebted to those early communities who decided to try something new and to our partners who saw the potential of our model. Ten years later, we are celebrating not just our 10th anniversary or the milestone of planting of 10 million trees, but a societal and cultural transformation. Both globally and locally, we are beginning to realise the value and potential trees have to mitigate climate change and improve livelihoods.


10 years of innovation

Taking Root has continued to drive its best-practice model for reforestation, it has consistently innovated and embraced technology to create the highest quality impacts possible. Often these innovations have been rooted in a need to overcome many of the traditional challenges facing reforestation projects. For example, one of Taking Root’s earliest innovations was to adopt polygon-based farm reporting, one of the first smallholder reforestation projects in the world to do so. Polygon reporting gave funders new transparency to see where their trees were being planted and the farmers they were supporting for the first time. Since its early innovations, Taking Root has been committed to reinventing ways to maximize impact.

Taking Root has come a long way from simple polygons, now having developed a fully integrated system for automating forest and carbon reporting. A global leader in the carbon markets, Taking Root has found new ways to connect funders with their impacts while breaking down barriers for smallholders to benefit from reforestation. For example, the development of Taking Root’s FARM-TRACE platform has created a novel approach to automate forest and carbon reporting for smallholder farmers. Consequently, it has become much less cost-prohibitive for smallholders to gain access to carbon markets to finance their reforestation activities.

Taking Root technician Edgar Bianerges Cruz measures the diameter of a tree in the field.
Taking Root technician Edgar Bianerges Cruz measures the diameter of a tree in the field.

Taking Root has also developed new ways of creating lasting value and impact for farmers from their forests, helping direct over $6.9 million to over 1,300 farming families while providing sustainable livehoods. Beyond facilitating market access with goods such as coffee and timber products, Taking Root has further innovated alternative forms of value through complementary services. To help coffee farmers implement organic farming practices (thereby giving a boost to the market price of their coffee), Taking Root introduced an affordable bioreactor to create compost. Similarly, we’ve integrated sustainable biochar practices with the farmers that we work with to improve crop yields, restore forest & soil health, and store carbon in the ground. While it is exciting to look on the past decade’s innovations and the value that they’ve brought farmers, we are even more excited to push these innovations further into the next 10 years.


Taking Root now going global

The past ten years have just been the beginning, and efforts need to be ramped up to meet the sheer scale of the challenge that climate change presents. Natural climate solutions with smallholder farmers have massive potential, and through Taking Root’s best practice model, we are now helping to create impact all around the world.

Taking Root is now working in 9 countries across all 3 tropical continents, sharing the Taking Root model with farmer organizations and using FARM-TRACE to implement and connect their impacts with funders. In the Ivory Coast, Taking Root is helping cacao farmers integrate trees into their full sun cacao systems to reduce the carbon footprint of a leading Swiss food brand. In Laos, coffee farmers are using FARM-TRACE to demonstrate their protection of shade trees on their coffee farms. While in Ecuador, farmers are tracking their reforestation activities to connect them to the carbon markets. Climate change is a truly global problem, and Taking Root is excited to maximize its impact around the world.

As we embark on the next ten years, there is lots to look forward to. The UN has declared 2021-2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, to focus on “preventing, halting and reversing the degradation of ecosystems worldwide.” Collaborations to tackle reforestation and climate change are also increasingly emerging. World Economic Forum launched the “1 trillion trees challenge”, the World Resources Institute launched the 20×20 initiative, and the United Nations co-launched the Green Gigaton Challenge.  Not only that, but more and more companies from the private sector are presenting net-zero carbon commitments, all of which show ample promise for a wide-scale collaborative approach to address climate change. Taking Root is thrilled to be a part of that approach and can’t wait to see what the next decade will bring.

Farmer Juan José Pérez Benavides on his farm in Las Canarias, San Juan de Limay.
Farmer Juan José Pérez Benavides on his farm in Las Canarias, San Juan de Limay.

Will leads the growth of Taking Root’s impact, working with our buyer, reforestation and funding partners to grow more trees with more farmers. He has a background in scaling technology and environmental solutions. Will led the marketing function at Concentra Analytics, worked as a sustainability consultant with Systemiq and has supported the growth of some the largest smallholder forest carbon projects in the world. He holds a Degree in Social Sciences from Cambridge University and is a member of the On Purpose leadership program.

Will leads the growth of Taking Root’s impact, working with our buyer, reforestation and funding partners to grow more trees with more farmers. He has a background in scaling technology and environmental solutions. Will led the marketing function at Concentra Analytics, worked as a sustainability consultant with Systemiq and has supported the growth of some the largest smallholder forest carbon projects in the world. He holds a Degree in Social Sciences from Cambridge University and is a member of the On Purpose leadership program.