Landesa
Climate Transformation Fund • Bay of Bengal
Halting deforestation through securing small-holder land rights
CTF funds Landesa’s project that aims to protect and restore mangrove forests in the Bay of Bengal, and engages in policy dialogues on promoting legal rights of small-holder forest owners across Southeast Asia. This project focuses on securing forest tenure, sustainable land management, reforestation, and afforestation.
Nature protection and restoration
Protecting and restoring nature is of paramount importance for addressing climate change. Deforestation and forest degradation result in substantial carbon emissions as forests are destroyed. Preserving the carbon stored in existing ecosystems and restoring carbon to areas that have lost it are critical steps in mitigating climate change. These actions not only help reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also have significant co-benefits for both human societies and biodiversity.
Mangrove restoration and protection
Mangrove restoration and protection refer to the ecological rehabilitation and conservation of mangrove forests, which are critical coastal ecosystems. Restoration involves planting and nurturing mangrove trees in areas where they have been degraded or destroyed, often due to factors like deforestation, pollution, or climate change. Protection focuses on conserving existing mangroves by implementing measures to prevent further loss and degradation. These efforts are vital for preserving biodiversity, protecting coastal communities from storm surges and erosion, enhancing fish populations, and sequestering carbon, thereby contributing to climate change mitigation.
Durable carbon removal
Namibia
PyroCCS pioneers sustainable industrial biochar carbon removal in the Global South, deploying its own low-cost, robust, pyrolysis systems powered by renewable energy and backed by a digital measurement and reporting solution. These plants efficiently convert invasive acacia bushes in Namibia, a significant threat to the savanna ecosystem, into high-quality biochar, while providing critical employment in regions with high youth unemployment rates. PyroCCS's scalable technology, which they are also offering as a solution to other project developers, not only captures carbon but also supports local agricultural and environmental recovery as well as food security.
Decarbonization
South Africa
CHAI will work on the high impact project of transitioning a portfolio of hospitals in South Africa's Western Cape Province to renewable energy. This could be a high impact measure that is currently not occurring due to the limited capacity of the department of health and because of bureaucratic hurdles to innovative financial and energy contracts. The project has the potential to reduce emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons, and leverages CHAI's extensive experience in health sector procurement and innovative finance.
Nature protection and restoration
Tanzania
This project develops a mobile app for regreening techniques like Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). The app delivers real-time, location-specific advice directly to farmers' phones. This approach reduces intervention costs by eliminating the need for in-person visits to every location. We already support Justdiggit’s regular work since 2021, and now added this project because it builds on proven FMNR methods, increasing cost-efficiency and potential for rapid scaling in dry landscapes.