Wren | Community tree planting
Community tree planting
East Africa · $35USD per tonne
Dec 2022: Archived due to lack of available credits for purchase. The door is open for this project to re-enter the portfolio in the future when there is sufficient supply to match Wren's demand.
This project is now archived.
Wren made the decision to archive this project due to lack of available credits for purchase. The door is open for Community Tree Planting to re-enter the portfolio in the future when there is sufficient supply to match Wren's demand.
We spent months finding a suitable nature-based solution to replace this project in the Classic portfolio, and in August 2023 we introduced a new tree planting initiative in Timor-Leste.
Sophie Westover
Head of Climate @ Wren
This project helps subsistence farmers in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. While the climate benefits are immense, TIST participants have also created over $140 million of economic benefits in addition to sales from carbon credits. TIST helps build leadership in these communities as well, and 50% of the leaders they help are women.
When Wren members offset their carbon footprint by supporting Community Tree Planting, the farmers planting and caring for the trees receive a supplemental income stream.
How does it work?
TIST hosts workshops and provides funding for farmers in East Africa to plant and benefit from trees.
Farmers form small groups to support each other as they grow their new trees, and get paid by TIST to maintain the groves.
As trees mature, they sequester carbon and provide valuable resources like fruit, fuel, windbreaks, and more.
Quantifiers contracted by TIST measure the growth of each grove and make the real time data available to anyone.
Why this project?
Afforestation is tricky—you can plant trees today, but what if someone cuts them down in 10 years? TIST’s model is extremely powerful because of the social benefits it creates. Farmers receive huge benefits from keeping the trees in the ground, ranging from direct revenue to fruit, fuel, windbreaks, and climate control. In addition, TIST focuses on groups of farmers, so there’s social pressure for these farmers to work together to keep their trees growing healthily. Their access to data is also unheard of—they send quantifiers out to literally measure the diameter of trees, and make that data available to anyone on the internet.
Half of Community Tree Planting's community leaders are women.
Press mentions
Community-driven tree planting greens the neighbouring landscape
Project updates
Apr 2022
Wren members have raised over $1,000,000 for tree planting in East Africa!
Together, the Wren community has funded the planting of millions of trees....
Dec 2021
Over 1,000 farmers join our project every month!
This month, Community Tree Planting made history....
Sep 2021
Community Tree Planting returns to its Tanzanian roots
The project went from 77 farmers to over 77,000– with more joining every week....
Where is the project located?
This map shows TIST Kenya's location near Mt. Kenya, approximately 250 km from Nairobi.
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Who is behind this project?
TIST has planted over 2,270,000 trees over 20 years, and almost all of them are still thriving. They have pioneered a model that is extremely successful, both in terms of keeping these trees growing and in providing immense social benefits to farmers. They grow primarily by word of mouth because the farmers find it to be very beneficial.
Community Tree Planting uses a methodology called Agroforestry, which blends layers of trees and crops to accomplish carbon sequestration and food production simultaneously.
Verification
TIST is an organization that has operated for 20+ years, created 16 projects listed on the Verra registry, and serves 100,000+ subsistence farmers that have planted over 2,270,000 trees. Their carbon offsets are measured by on the ground independent "quantifiers" they contract to measure tree trunks and take photos of the tree groves.
This animated map shows hundreds of yellow dots, each representing a tree grove of at least 1,000 trees, being planted around Mt. Kenya.
However, the carbon offsets we offer here are not certified on VCS. We sell unverified TIST tonnes that support the farmers left behind on registry projects due to evolving VCS standards and their long engagement with TIST. However, these tree groves are measured by quantifiers that use the same protocol to quantify and validate offsets for Verra projects to ensure their validity.
More information about this project is available at on TIST's homepage.
If you would like to view Verra's assessment of TIST's methodology and progress in Uganda and Kenya, download the PDFs below:
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Nature.com - TIST Decadal Success Potential
Download
PDF
Verra VCS - TIST Uganda Certification
Download
PDF
Verra VCS - TIST Kenya Certification
Download