Trees for Global Benefits: Uganda's Smallholder Carbon Forestry Programme

"I will not spare a forest if I'm hungry." That line, from Freddie Kalibwani, is the whole problem in a sentence — and Trees for Global Benefits is ECOTRUST's twenty-year answer to it. Uganda's biggest source of emissions is deforestation driven by agriculture. 70% of the country's land is farmed, and 80% of that land is managed by smallholders. So any serious attempt to keep trees standing has to begin with the people who already own the ground, and it has to make trees worth more to them than clearing would be. Trees for Global Benefits began in 2003 with 33 farmers in three groups. It now works with more than 50,000 households. Farmers design their own land use plans, plant trees alongside the food crops they depend on rather than instead of them, and get paid up front — ex ante — for carbon those trees haven't captured yet. That detail matters more than it sounds: you cannot ask a subsistence farmer to invest today and wait a decade for the return. The credits are certified to the Plan Vivo standard, and around 60p in every pound invested in ECOTRUST reaches communities as direct cash transfer. What the people running it describe isn't a tree-planting project. It's an attempt to change what a piece of land is worth to the person standing on it. FEATURED Pauline Nantongo Kalunda — Executive Director, ECOTRUST Freddie Kalibwani — Business Development Consultant, ECOTRUST Lydia Kuganyirwa — TGB Project Coordinator, ECOTRUST Sheila Katushabe — Data Systems Coordinator, ECOTRUST Winnie Namirya — Rwenzori Landscape Coordinator, ECOTRUST MADE BY Produced by Here Now Films for ECOTRUST Director — Oliver Couch Producer — Morgan Cartlidge DOP — Oliver Couch Editor — Oliver Couch Colourist — Oliver Couch ABOUT HERE NOW FILMS We make films about things that are genuinely hard to explain — carbon finance, conservation economics, the machinery sitting behind a phrase like "nature-based solutions" — for audiences who don't arrive already fluent in the subject. Working on something complex that needs to land well beyond your own sector? We'd like to hear about it: ed@herenow.film / herenow.film LINKS EcoTrust - https://ecotrust.or.ug Trees for Global Benefits — https://ecotrust.or.ug/trees-for-glob... Plan Vivo — https://planvivo.org Here Now Films — https://herenow.film #TreesForGlobalBenefits #ECOTRUST #Uganda #CarbonForestry #Agroforestry #PlanVivo #ClimateFinance #Documentary