2022–23 Report: Rainforest Alliance

2022 donation: $30,000
Donations to date: $110,000

Our donations allowed the Rainforest Alliance (RA) to expand their climate-smart agriculture work in Ghana — benefitting 3,600 local farmers across 76 communities by providing the climate-smart tools and training necessary to produce cocoa sustainably and conserve Ghana's forest landscape.

In Ghana, unsustainable cocoa production is a key driver of deforestation and causes close to half of the forest loss in the high forest zone — resulting in an unbalanced ecosystem with more erosion, heavier rains, longer droughts, and lower crop yields. RA works to conserve Ghana's forest landscape and support agricultural livelihoods of local farmers by providing them with skills and resources necessary to produce cocoa more sustainably and an incentive to manage their shade trees. Properly managed shade trees act as a carbon sink, improve soil conditions, restore tree cover, create a suitable habitat for wildlife, and improve the cocoa yield — resulting in more resilient crops and land, higher incomes for farmers, and greater food security.

Over the last three years, RA has enabled communities to implement climate-smart practices that improve soil conditions, establish 14 tree nurseries, produce 280,000 seedlings (including two additional tree species to increase biodiversity), restore 5 hectares of degraded land (two hectares of which bordered the Tano River within the Sui Forest Reserve), develop GPS technology that monitors tree survival rates and changes in land use and cover, and conduct 28 trainings for 3,600 farmers.

Our donation will allow RA to expand into new communities in the Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai district and continue to incentivize hardworking farmers, create tree nurseries, grow and register more trees, conduct more trainings, and transition accountability to local Landscape Management Boards to ensure climate-smart agriculture practices are followed and illegal deforestation is tracked.

2021 donation: $30,000
Donations to date: $80,000

Our donations allowed the Rainforest Alliance (RA) to expand their climate-smart agriculture work in Ghana and provide 2,600 local farmers in 76 communities the climate-smart tools and resources necessary to sustainably produce cocoa, manage their shade trees, and conserve Ghana's forest landscape.

RA works with farmers and forest communities in over 70 countries to protect forests and biodiversity, promote the rights and livelihoods of rural people, and help mitigate the effects of climate change. In Ghana, where cocoa is a vital cash crop that supports the livelihoods to over a million households, unsustainable cocoa production is a key driver of deforestation and causes close to half of the forest loss in Ghana's high forest zone — resulting in an unbalanced ecosystem with more erosion, heavier rains, longer droughts, and lower crop yields. By providing farmers with the skills and resources necessary to produce cocoa more sustainably and better manage their shade trees, RA hopes to conserve Ghana's forest landscape, create carbon sinks, improve soil conditions, restore tree cover, create a suitable habitat for wildlife, and improve the cocoa yield. The goal: to help farmers boost their climate resilience and improve their livelihoods while contributing less to climate change.

With our funding, RA restored just over two hectares of land bordering the Tano River within the Sui Forest Reserve that are under threat from farm expansion, climate change, and tourism (bringing their total restoration area up to 4.1 hectares); planted over 91,000 seedlings (170,000 since the project began); expanded their capacity at four nursery sites; introduced two additional tree species to increase biodiversity; and continued to register trees at over 1,000 farms. These restoration efforts were aligned with Ghana's national "Green Ghana Day" initiative to plant 5 million trees in 2021 and 100 million trees by 2024. (In this part of the world, people — understanding the importance of this work — like to say, "Trees make rain.")

Going forward, RA will continue to help farmers grow and register more trees, implement GPS technology to monitor tree survival rates, expand their restoration activities to Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai, establish a new nursery site, produce 100,000 more seedlings, and help local Landscape Management Boards ensure climate-smart agriculture practices are followed and illegal deforestation is tracked.

Donation: $50,000

Our donation helped the Rainforest Alliance (RA) expand their reforestation program in Ghana. Over the past year, RA helped farmers increase their cocoa capacity (without the typical deforestation) through trainings and workshops, established five tree nursery sites, and produced over 84,000 seedlings — double their original projection.

RA focuses on the deforestation in Ghana, which is mainly caused by unsustainable cocoa production. They help conserve the cocoa forest landscape, increase the cocoa yield, and sustain the farming livelihoods of communities by teaching climate-smart practices and empowering the farmers to be responsible for managing the landscapes and restoring deforested areas.

In early 2020, RA identified 4,000 hectares of land for restoration under threat from farm expansion, climate change, and tourism; established four nursery sites; produced 60,000 seedlings; provided 2,584 farmers with climate-smart tools and techniques; and trained 44 members of local Landscape Management Boards — half of them women — in nursery management.

By early summer, RA established a fifth nursery site and germinated an additional 20,000 seedlings to support the Ghana Cocoa Board’s goal of replacing all cocoa trees infected with disease. COVID-19 restricted their ability to hold trainings, as the government partially locked down this area. But RA communicated using online technologies (if internet access was available) or broadcasting audio recordings over the public speaker systems in many villages and rural areas.