This year, Teknoflor is partnering with The Kasigau Corridor Redd Project to support its mission to stop deforestation and help keep forests intact. Teknoflor provided the organization with 1,000 Verified Carbon Units (VCUs) for its second phase of the project – The Community Ranches.

The Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Project protects over 200,000 hectares of dryland forest with over 11,000 wild elephants that live in this ecosystem (2,000+ of those elephants call Rukinga their permanent home). The project provides social programs that impact over 116,000 local people and provides the local community of the Kasigau Corridor region with long-term jobs that replace unsustainable sources of income such as poaching, subsidence agriculture and illegal tree harvesting. In an area where wildlife and human survival were at odds, the project has created a market-driven solution to wildlife conservation through an expansive community-led, community-based conservation model, with profound and lasting impact.

Additionally, REDD+ projects empower forest communities by enabling them to build schools, develop jobs, and provide alternatives to the time-consuming task of firewood gathering for daily cooking, most of which falls on women and young girls.

Deforestation is a triple threat because the trees can no longer store carbon, the felled forests release carbon dioxide themselves and what most often replaces the now-vanished forest, livestock and crops, generates massive amounts of even more greenhouse gases.

“Deforestation is responsible for about 11% of greenhouse gas emissions, and the IPCC has said that we cannot fight climate change without addressing the forest destruction and degradation,” said Ana Metaxas, sustainability specialist of HMTX Industries. “When we protect forests, we not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also protect wildlife, biodiversity, endangered cultures, and help forest communities sustainably prosper by not resorting to slash and burn agriculture or driving them off their lands to extract resources. We’re very proud to be part of the reason these trees still stand.”

For more information, visit https://www.everlandmarketing.com/projects/kasigau-corridor/