Nariva Swamp Restoration, Carbon Sequestration and Livelihoods Project (Trinidad and Tobago)

The Nariva Swamp is Trinidad's largest freshwater wetland and has been a Ramsar Wetland of International Importance since 1993, hosting over 175 recorded bird species within a mosaic of tropical forest, swamp forest, palm swamp, mangrove and marsh. Decades of illegal rice cultivation and squatting degraded large tracts of the swamp's forest cover.

The Nariva Swamp Restoration, Carbon Sequestration and Livelihoods Project, led by Trinidad and Tobago's Environmental Management Authority with the Forestry Division (Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries) and the University of the West Indies, and supported by a World Bank loan, began in 2008. It aimed to reforest a combined 1,000-1,500 hectares of degraded swamp over 3-5 years through reforestation, hydrological rehabilitation and fire management, while creating employment for residents displaced from illegal farming and generating carbon-sequestration co-benefits.

According to the independent ID-RECCO REDD+ projects database, the project's status is recorded as "ended" (last updated 2020), with no carbon certification ever achieved and no publicly disclosed figures for hectares actually restored, total funding, or jobs created — these fields are explicitly marked as not disclosed.

This practice is included as a cautionary case: an internationally financed wetland restoration and carbon project with a sound design on paper, for which there is no public evidence that its stated reforestation, livelihoods or carbon goals were ultimately achieved or independently verified.

Read the full analysis: https://www.reddprojectsdatabase.org/138-nariva-swamp-restoration-carbon-sequestration-and-livelihoods-project/