Halo Verde — Timor-Leste Community Forest Carbon Project

Halo Verde ('Make Green' in Tetum) is the first Plan Vivo-certified carbon project in Timor-Leste and reportedly the first in Southeast Asia. Founded by the Timorese foundation Fundação Carbon Offset Timor (FCOTI, formally registered in 2018) with technical support from Australia's Charles Sturt University, the project has worked since 2011 with rural households in the Laclubar and Soibada areas of Manatuto Municipality, a region recovering from decades of conflict-driven deforestation and reliant on shifting cultivation.

Farmers receive recurring incentive payments tied to tree planting and survival on their own land, in agroforestry plots mixing food, fodder and timber species, following the Plan Vivo model of phased certificates rather than a single upfront payment. The project uses the SHAMBA (Small-Holder Agriculture Mitigation Benefit Assessment) carbon-accounting methodology with a 15% risk buffer, and underwent formal Plan Vivo validation in 2020, audited by the Scotland-based Landscapes and Livelihoods Group.

By the early 2020s the project had engaged more than 1,000 farmers across roughly 150 smallholder plots covering about 75 hectares, for an estimated gross carbon potential of nearly 69,000 tCO2. Public reporting indicates that although close to 20,000 tonnes of credits had been certified by around 2021, only roughly 200 tonnes — about 1% — had actually been sold.

This gap between credits certified and credits sold underscores a common challenge for small, remote Plan Vivo-style projects: certification does not guarantee market access, and revenue reaching farmers may lag well behind the credits nominally generated on paper.