Solomon Islands Tribes Sell Carbon Credits, Not Their Trees
In a South Pacific nation ravaged by logging, several tribes joined together to sell “high integrity” carbon credits... The project not only preserves their highly biodiverse rainforest, but it funnels life-changing income to Indigenous landowners.
When head ranger Ikavy Pitatamae walks into the rainforest on Choiseul Island, the westernmost of the nearly 1,000 islands that make up the South Pacific archipelago of Solomon Islands, he surveys it with the heart of a tribal landowner and the eye of a forester.
Leading the way up a track into the bush, he wades into a glassy stream, stirring small, brown fish into a spin. Surveys have identified some 50 freshwater species in these waters, a haven of biodiversity in a nation ravaged by high rates of logging. At the sound of a thumping whoosh overhead, Pitatamae points up just as two Papuan hornbills flash across a gap in the canopy. “They always fly in pairs,” observes Wilko Bosma, a lanky Dutchman trailing behind the ranger. “They’re committed for life.”
Bosma made his own commitment to this forest after landing here 25 years ago as an idealistic forestry graduate, working alongside Indigenous tribal landowners on small, sustainable timber projects. That’s how, in 2004, he came to establish with tribal partners a local conservation NGO — the Natural Resources Development Foundation (NRDF) — and got to know Linford Pitatamae, the older brother of ranger Ikavy and a ( article continues at Yale E360 )