RCA Carbon today announced their food and forest balancing agroforestry project, located in East Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia. The project is being deployed over both coastal and inland locations, supporting existing land use optimization and agro-productivity opportunities in partnership with local landowners and farmers
The initial project area is approximately 5,000 hectares of which 2,000 hectares is currently planted with coconut in a mix of coastal mono crop and inland shade crop plantings within long established coffee and cacao plantings. Within the 2,000 hectares, there are approximately 120,000 coconut trees and this figure is projected to rise to 500,000 over the project lifecycle. The operating structure is a Nucleus-Plasma inclusive agri-business model and is a first for East Nusa Tenggara province.
RCA Carbon catalyses measurable climate action and sustainable development outcomes within regenerative coconut agroforestry, by driving investment to activities that remove carbon, improve livelihoods, and protect nature while balancing food and forest. The project meets an urgent need to modernize climate smart farming for the benefit of the landowners, farmers, and global food industry. At the same time, the next generation of smallholder farmers may access an opportunity to remain involved in farming. With much of the globe’s coconut plantation area senescent and unproductive, this project spells a crucial tipping point within the coconut supply-chain.
The selection of the SDG impacts for the project is based on impact measurement and management principals, and the selection of realistic, achievable project KPIs for continuous assessment of progress.
As the global inventory of voluntary carbon credits is both declining and experiencing price pressure, (Sylvera, “The Carbon Credit Crunch” June 2021) each increase in the price of carbon works to place sustainability and carbon removal closer to core business strategic decision-making. Strong demand from large corporations and increasing speculative activity is anticipated to accelerate opportunity for the high quality ‘top-tier’ offsets produced from RCA Carbon projects.
Haigan Murray, RCA Carbon Founder and two-decade veteran in the coconut sector, said of the project collaboration, “We are delighted to be developing this food forest project, in particular, to deliver top-tier nature-based solutions to help counteract global warming and contribute to food security. The coconut tree remains overlooked despite its great potential to contribute to the global sustainable development goals and we aim to change that. By applying our extensive sector expertise, we balance positive social impact, improve food security and protect biodiversity while removing significant quantities of carbon.”
RCA Carbon has more than twenty years of engagement in the coconut arena and is corporate sponsor of Coconut Knowledge Centre (CKC), a not-for-profit organisation. “CKC is a diverse intelligence group supporting leading individuals and organisations to innovate and improve coconut sector performance. Contributing, at scale, to a higher understanding of how coconut contributes positively to a range of SDG’s.” https://coconutknowledgecenter.com
For more information on this article contact: info@rcacarbon.com
