Kasigau Corridor REDD+ Forestry

Situated in the Taita Taveta District, Kenya, between the Tsavo East and Tsavo West National Parks, the Kasigau Corridor project avoids unplanned deforestation and degradation of tropical forests. This second phase of the project is on 13 blocks of land owned by Indigenous Community Ownership Groups.

The project developer, Wildlife Works, has launched this carbon project having already spent 10 years building a local consumer clothing business that created jobs, built schools and provided economic benefits to communities, in order to conserve endangered and threatened wildlife. Wildlife Works Carbon was a natural extension to this work, enabling the provision of a revenue stream from bio diverse forest protection.

The project reduces carbon dioxide emissions by protecting natural carbon sinks that, in the absence of the project, would have been deforested and/or degraded for subsistence agriculture, typically using slash and burn techniques to grow maize. The area primarily consists of low density forestland, shrub land, and grassland savannah. Historically, deforestation in the areas adjacent to the project areas was primarily driven by the local farmers from the Taita and Duruma Tribes. These communities converted the land to cropland, typically by first degrading the land for the illegal charcoal trade, followed by subsistence agriculture. The deforestation and degradation mostly began in the late 1980s, largely due to more families moving into the area to harvest as the more fertile hill top lands could no longer meet the needs of the population.

Wildlife Works has implemented a wide range of sustainable development initiatives in the project area and adjacent land to reduce deforestation, with much of the focus on influencing behavioural change through agroforestry projects, but also through physical protection with unarmed ranger patrols. As the carbon project builds, Wildlife Works is committed to expanding and creating a new range of innovative co-benefits for the communities, all of which are developed in close consultation with community committees.