The Yaeda-Eyasi project tells a powerful story of ancient indigenous communities, their lands and introduces innovative and ethical mechanisms in the international climate finance.
The Yaeda-Eyasi Landscape project protects 110,500 hectares of forests in Northern Tanzania for Indigenous people, wildlife and climate. It is an avoided deforestation project that strengthens land tenure, management capacity and local natural resource management. In addition, it diversifies income for Hadza hunter-gatherer and Datooga pastoralist communities.
Successful avoided deforestation is achieved through a series of interventions: reinforcing the implementation of the approved village land use plan, improving forest conservation and management activities and addressing the primary drivers of deforestation.
The agreement to reduce deforestation was reached through a land management plan approved by the communities and the training of 40 wildlife guardians. In Tanzania drivers of deforestation, that continues at a 1-2% forest loss per year, lie primarily in the expansion of slash and burn agriculture to give space to crops.
The Yaeda Valley project started in 2011 and it is still operational. So far it has protected 110,500 hectares of dryland forest in northern Tanzania, the ancestral homeland of the Hadza hunter-gatherers, involving old traditional hunters and gatherer communities in land tenure that belonged to them since ancient times. With the certainty to live on their lands, they implemented projects to reduce deforestation and to educate to wildlife protection. Avoided deforestation, measured through robust and transparent Plan Vivo methodologies, resulted in carbon credits sold in the international voluntary market. Partnership with Carbon Tanzania has allowed to protect 110,500 hectares of forests and to generate carbon credits for $ 577,449 providing additional sources of income. The revenue earned from the sale of certified carbon credits is paid directly to forest communities, allowing them to manage their own development needs. These included health care services worth $ 152,764 and education. So far extra income allowed 1382 children to attend a primary school, 222 students a secondary school and paid university fees to 18 students.
Benefits of the project included climate change mitigation, land rights and biodiversity conservation.
Forests in Northern Tanzania host Acacia (Acacia Commiphora) and Baobab trees as well as threatened animals like leopards, cheetahs, giraffes, wild dogs. Landscape conservation created also an ecological corridor for wildlife to the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area, a critical
requirement for migratory species.
Several environmental and social benefits accrued through the project:
- Income from PES (Payment for ecosystem services) supports a fund for emergency food rations required during times of drought
- A Medical Fund was established to provide Hazda communities assured access to free medical care year round
- Hadza communities are trained to scientifically measure the carbon stock of their forest. Carbon revenues iare used by the communities to access primary, secondary and university education. So far 1622 studenst have benefited.
Before the project, deforestation was rated at 5% per year, while income from carbon credits allowed to halt the loss of forest cover and improved the population of elephants, lions and leopards.
The Yaeda Valley project won the United Nations Equator Initiative Prize.