Community-Based Avoided Deforestation Project — Cacheu & Cantanhez National Parks (Guinea-Bissau)

The Community-Based Avoided Deforestation project, developed by Guinea-Bissau's protected-areas institute (Instituto da Biodiversidade e das Áreas Protegidas, IBAP) with the BioGuinea Foundation, covers 181,200 hectares spanning the Cacheu Mangroves Natural Park (Tarrafes de Cacheu) and Cantanhez National Park. It protects forest and mangrove habitat against clearance for agriculture and charcoal production.

Registered under the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS project ID 2324) with a crediting period running 2011-2031, the project channels 30% of REDD+ revenue directly to participating communities through the Fund for Local Environmental Initiatives (FIAL), alongside non-cash benefits such as environmental education and paid roles in community forest monitoring.

The project has generated 1,806,617 verified carbon credits against a 2002-2017 deforestation baseline. An independent evaluation using satellite imagery and household interviews (2000-2020), conducted as academic research through NOVA University Lisbon, found statistically significant reductions in forest loss and agricultural expansion inside the protected areas after 2017 — but found no statistically significant protective effect for mangroves specifically.

This is a genuine mixed result rather than an unqualified success: general forest-loss reduction is evidenced, but the mangrove-specific protective effect is not. Because Verra's own project registry page could not be directly retrieved for this write-up, the credit and hectare figures rely on the project developer's technical documentation cross-checked against an independent REDD-project database and the NOVA University Lisbon evaluation, rather than a primary registry lookup.