Raleo in Arimae

Over the past few weeks we have been working with the community of Arimae to do a raleo, or thinning, of their community-owned native timber. The community has about 15 hectares of native species trees, including mahogany, spanish cedar, and spanish oak that hadn't been thinned or properly maintained. Through an offtake agreement with a local indigenous-operated sawmill, we're helping the community sell some of the commercially viable trees. As you can see, this is a very manual process--no fancy machinery, just hard work.

Update on Kiva Loans

Partner David standing in front of some of his existing plantain trees

Late in July we closed a plantain loan on Kiva, a microlending platform that supports entrepreneurs and projects in the developing world. The $6,000 loan will cover the costs of a plantain project with our partner David, including seed stock, fertilizer, fencing materials, and technical assistance.

This latest one closes out our round of seven plantain loans, all with our smallholder and Indigenous partners in Panama. We are already starting to harvest plantains from project funded with our 2013 loans, and look forward to hopefully renewing an agreement with Kiva to continue doing these high-impact projects.

With our remaining credit line, we plan to fundraise on Kiva for longer term timber projects, that will deliver more revenue and opportunity for our Panamanian partners.

We took this set of videos to demonstrate the process of seeding the plantains in the nursery prior to planting.

Workers in the Panamanian Indigenous village of Arimae mix soil for use in a plantain nursery

Arimae in the News for Forest Carbon Inventory Project

Arimae and its forest reservation were recently featured in a blog and a video feature related to forest monitoring. Planting Empowerment supports the building of this skill set within the community as a manner to generate better land management planning.

The blog through written by the Environmental Defense Fund, Organization of Embera and Wounaan Youth of Panama, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute describes the forest monitoring training and data collection that took place in early April. It was the first of many training and data collection plots that would be done through Indigenous Territories throughout eastern Panama. The results of the data collection and training process will probably be presented at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference being held later this year in Lima, Peru.

The UN-REDD program of Panama released this video of a different type of forest monitoring that was executed in Arimae’s forest reserve. The video includes a number of interviews with members of the Arimae community with whom Planting Empowerment has collaborated with for a number of years. The video also includes some interesting filmography done from a drone which shows some great shots of the community and the deforestation that is taking place in their reserve.

We’re encouraged to see this type of activity happening in Arimae’s collective lands because they help the community conserve its remaining, but dwindling, forest reservation.

Updates in Pictures

Our Operations Manager Mateo Johnson took some shots of our plantain operations over the past few weeks. Here we publish some of our favorites.

Taking plantain seed to the planting site

Peeling the plantain seed before being planted

A plantain expert explains how to plant the plantain seed in bags

Temporary nursery set up to incubate plantain stalks before transplanting

Unloading plantain seed from upriver

This many plantain trees will produce a lot of patacones