Nürüm Indigenous Reforestation & Carbon Payment Pilot — Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca (Panama)

In October 2022, following a year-long free, prior and informed consent process culminating in a District Congress of Nürüm attended by around 500 community members, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) signed an agreement with traditional authorities of Panama's Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca — the country's largest Indigenous territory, covering over 9% of its land area — to begin an Indigenous-led reforestation and carbon-payment pilot in the Nürüm district, within the Panama Canal watershed. Partners include the Panamanian NGO CEASPA, the Panama Canal Authority and the Ministry of the Environment (MiAmbiente), with funding from the Mark and Rachel Rohr Foundation and a UK Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate grant.

In its first two years, around 30 Indigenous families planted 19 native tree species across 19 sites, covering 100 hectares within a wider 45,000-hectare target landscape. Landowners retain full ownership and control of their land throughout, including the option to harvest timber species in future — the project does not require them to cede land rights in exchange for payment.

Carbon payments are set at a flat $130 per hectare per year for up to 20 years, beginning after year five, priced using roughly $18–20 per tonne of CO2 and drawing on 14 years of carbon-stock data from STRI's long-running Agua Salud research site, which found reforested plots sequester about 11 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year once soil, root and litter ('ecosystem') carbon is included alongside tree biomass. The flat-payment structure is designed to shift the risk of tree survival from farmers to carbon buyers. As of the most recent reporting, the pilot has not been certified under an external carbon standard such as Plan Vivo or Verra, and remains a small-scale, experimental programme rather than a verified carbon-credit project.

Read the full analysis: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/967512