Trees of Hope — Community Agroforestry Carbon (Malawi)

Trees of Hope is a community agroforestry-carbon initiative in Malawi's Dowa and Neno districts, run by the Clinton Development Initiative (CDI) with Carbon Offsets To Alleviate Poverty (COTAP), operating under Plan Vivo Standard certification. Smallholder farmers on degraded forest and agricultural land are compensated for boundary planting of indigenous hardwoods, mango orchards and woodlots, generating verified carbon credits sold on the voluntary market.

Restore degraded forest and agricultural land while providing smallholder farmers with a supplementary cash income from verified carbon credit sales, targeting a minimum 55% revenue share to participants.

Farmers organized into ~200 producer groups planted boundary hardwoods, mango orchards and woodlots across 488+ hectares plus 5,743 boundary plantings; verified carbon sequestration was monetized at US$5 per tonne CO2e and distributed to participants, several of whom opened bank accounts for the first time to receive payment.

Over 2,000 smallholder farmers registered, of whom 875 had received payment by 2016; roughly 2 million trees were planted; more than US$100,000 had been distributed to participants by 2016; and 376 farmers opened a bank account for the first time upon receiving payment. The project's crediting period targeted roughly 200,000 tCO2e of sequestration.

The project met its Plan Vivo monitoring and reporting obligations and delivered measurable financial-inclusion side-effects (first-time bank accounts), but credit issuance has since concluded and new carbon-credit allocation is paused, while biodiversity, water and soil co-benefits were never independently quantified.