Farmers for Forests (F4F)

Deforestation is a major problem in India and globally, with 80% of tropical deforestation being attributed to agricultural expansion. Meanwhile, compensatory afforestation efforts are often unscientific and poorly implemented resulting in biodiverse, native forests being replaced by monoculture plantations of commercially viable trees. 

F4F addresses these twin problems through using a payments-for-ecosystem services (PES) model to 

1. Prevent deforestation by directly addressing its financial drivers in communities through the provision of a cash transfer for protecting forests
2. Restore degraded, unused land back into biodiverse forests and financially compensate communities to look after them 
3. Provide financially vulnerable communities an alternate source of income through cash transfers and agroforestry

Our work sequesters carbon, increases biodiversity, creates green jobs and provides a steady source of income to farmers and forest-dependant communities while linking them to rapidly growing carbon credit markets. 

Forests and the ecosystem services they provide are not accurately valued by our global economic system. This has led to indiscriminate exploitation of these resources. 

Deforestation is a major contributor to climate change, emitting more carbon than the entire European Union put together in 2016. Between 2001 to 2018, India lost nearly 2 million hectares of tree-cover and primary forests. Currently over 75% of the land classified as "forest or tree cover" in India falls outside of government mandated protected areas, leaving it vulnerable to degradation. While legally any deforestation in India is to be accompanied by  compensatory afforestation - most afforestation efforts are monoculture plantations of commercially viable trees.

Within India, farmers and forest-dependent communities are pegged to be the worst affected by climate change. The Economic Survey of India estimates farmers will face income reductions of upto 25% as a result of erratic rainfall, extreme weather events and rising temperatures

Farmers and forests are caught in a vicious cycle. Climate-change reduces their yields and incomes. As a result of this farmers are being forced to clear more forestland for agriculture (over 80% of tropical deforestation is attributed to agriculture) which in turn is worsening climate change.

We use PES or a result-based payment approach to both protect and restore forests in India. There is promising evidence, including a Randomized Controlled Trial from Uganda, that shows that PES can reduce deforestation. Other research has found that PES programs improve social capital by bolstering and structuring voluntary efforts at conservation taken on by communities. We decided to go with PES out of all the available solutions to deforestation because it is scalable and transparent (direct to account cash transfers are easily monitored).

In our program, we first identify degraded land and forests experiencing deforestation. This is done through satellite data and on-ground field visits. We understand the reasons behind the problem and work with the community to tailor our model to their needs. 

Next, GPS mapping of all the land is done and land records are verified. Where the land is degraded or partially forested, we undertake ecological restoration services like deweeding, improving soil microbial diversity, planting native trees, etc. Our field teams provides on-ground support to communities post ecological restoration. We track all of our forests using a mix of remote and in-field data and provide quarterly cash transfers to forest-owning individuals and communities.

Our solution primarily serves farmers, indigenous tribes and forest-dependant communities. In order to tailor our solution to their needs we undertook several quantitative and qualitative surveys to understand their needs and problems before implementing our pilot programs. In the last 1.5 years since launch, we have continued to refine our model based on feedback received from participants and our own on-ground learnings. 

We provide an annual cash transfer of INR 8000 - INR 10,000 per acre. For the average farmer family in India, the annual income is ~INR 100,000 and average land holding is ~2.5 acres. 

Participants in our program can thus get reliable, income support of between 8% to 20% of their annual income in addition to being able to reap the economic and nutritional benefits from the variety of different fruits, medicinal herbs and minor forest produce that these trees bear.

Our work also creates numerous green jobs in the communities, especially for women that work primarily as tree planters. Forests also improve groundwater recharge in the village, increase biodiversity and attract a wide range of pollinators from insects to birds to mammals. Several studies point to the beneficial effects that increased biodiversity and pollinators have on crop yields as well. 

While our work spans all four dimensions of the challenge, it is most closely aligned to helping communities "preserve and restore carbon-rich ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots" since we work with them to directly protect and restore biodiverse forests in India (including the Western Ghats, a global biodiversity hotspot)

By using and building upon current satellite, drone and AI methodologies to track ecosystem metrics in our program areas we are also working on providing verifiable ecosystem data. 

By implementing a results-based-payment system and agroforestry and connecting communities to carbon credit markets we are also creating scalable economic opportunities for them.

We are in the pilot stage because while we have early data (soil quality improvement, sapling survival rates, farmer satisfaction) that shows promising results, we are still refining aspects of our model (like number, type and placement of trees; cash transfer amounts and frequency) based on participant feedback and field results. 

We have currently deployed our solution in three districts (Ahmednagar, Raigad and Gadchiroli) in the state of Maharashtra in India: 

• Gadchiroli - Forest protection and reforestation in 10,000 hectares of community owned land in collaboration with 71 villages 
• Raigad - Forest protection and reforestation pilot study over ~125 acres of land and 25 villages; this work is being carried out in collaboration with J-PAL South Asia
• Ahmednagar - Afforestation in degraded farmer lands that are no longer being used for cultivation. We’ve completed afforestation in 10 acres and are in the process of doing another 10 this year

While Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) has been implemented in some form or the other in countries like  Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica - it has never been used in India. To the best of our knowledge, the Global Green Growth Institute and F4F are the only two organizations in India currently using PES and both began operations recently. While most PES programs have focused primarily on deforestation prevention, we've designed our programs to also focus on afforestation and reforestation as well as improving socioeconomic outcomes in our communities.

By tracking all our outcomes meticulously and providing donors with a dashboard that gives them access to drone footage and satellite data for the forests they help to protect or grow and the farmers they are supporting, we are bringing much needed accountability and data-based tracking to the Indian afforestation sector where there's currently little tracking of what happens to trees 5 or 50 years after they have been planted.

We've recently also begun the process of connecting our PES programs to  carbon credit markets which can provide a long-term source of sustainable finance. Our program is being designed such that Gram Sabhas (legally established constitutional bodies of which every adult of a village is a member) can be equipped with all the necessary competencies to become project developers and receive carbon revenue directly. This is unprecedented (since most carbon credit projects are developed by intermediaries) and a major step in the direction of empowering forest-dependent communities (~256 million people) across India.

Direct Impact:

• We are currently working directly with ~8000 families (40,000 people)
• In the next 1 year we will scale to 15,000 families (75,000 people)
• In the next 5 years we will scale to 50,000 families (250,000 people)

Indirect Impact:

• In 5 years we expect our programs to be sequestering the carbon emissions of 3+ million Indians

The particular outcome metrics we track are:

• Change in quantity and quality of forest cover 
• Carbon sequestration 
• Biodiversity 
• Soil quality 
• Spending patterns in communities
• Income
• Employment 
• Social capital 
• Environmental awareness

Full-time staff: 8 

Part-time staff: 3

Contractual staff: ~60 

Our core leadership team consists of 5 members, each of whom has nearly a decade or more of experience across varying sectors like non-profit management, public health, agriculture, cash transfer programs, monitoring & evaluation, government relations, large-scale on-ground fieldwork and finance. 

Over 65% of our team members (including 2 members of our core-leadership team) are from the local community or area where we work; this has been instrumental in allowing us to include community perspectives in our program as well as continuously refine our model based on feedback. 

We apply the following values in our day-to-day work to build an equitable, diverse and inclusive work culture:

Out of many, we are one

We’re proud to be a diverse collection of people that bring different life and work experiences, world views, backgrounds, and technical skills to this organization. However, from these myriad identities emerges a singular identity and priority to become, and encourage others to become, effective climate stewards in our communities. This allows us to debate even divergent ideas candidly and respectfully, as we keep this priority in the forefront of all our conversations.

Collaboration

Nobody has a monopoly on knowledge and “what works,” including us. We recognize we’re working in a burgeoning space that needs advocates and skeptics alike to make it better and we're committed to sharing our experiences, learnings and mistakes. We actively seek out individuals and organizations to work with us, as long as their ultimate goal is the same as ours - to improve the status-quo.

Being rigorously curious

We’re purposefully un-dogmatic. We’re not tied to any specific ideology or models. We’re solely driven by a need to find new, innovative solutions to unsolved problems that are backed by rigorous data and evidence. That can only happen in environments where listening, questioning and critical thinking is encouraged. We strive to create such environments for ourselves and all our stakeholders

Protecting thousands of hectares of vulnerable forests and reforesting thousands more is not a task one team or organization can do alone. It requires collaboration at scale. 

In particular, we'd like to leverage on the Solve network to help us do the following: 

• Use deep learning to automate the process of calculating carbon sequestered in forests and soils to drive more investment in the forestry sector 
• Improve forest resilience to climate change by incorporating research from botany and soil biology in our fieldwork 
• Provide innovative financing solutions to communities that will enable them to manage and restore their forests 

In addition to the tech support we've mentioned above, we'd also like help with branding and marketing to individuals and companies interested in planting trees to offset their carbon footprint. 

In particular we are envisioning developing a easy-to-use, informative app or game where users can plant trees, keep track of their trees planted, carbon sequestered, etc. 

We'd like to continue our partnership with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT and add to the growing literature on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), particularly addressing currently unanswered questions in the PES literature like optimal cash transfer amount, frequency, how PES works in the Indian context, etc. 

We'd also like to partner with MIT's Climate and Sustainability Consortium to scale forest-based carbon sequestration. 

Forests are the best solution we have for sequestering carbon. Not only do they sequester carbon, but they also provide a host of other ecosystem benefits like biodiversity, prevention of soil erosion, groundwater recharge, habitats for endangered species. Forests are also an important source of livelihoods for over 200 million people in India and over 1 billion people globally. 

F4F is well-qualified to receive the GM prize because we work directly with communities to help them restore and protect forests as well as as provide them with the support needed to track forest cover and health over time, improve soil carbon sequestration, harvest sustainably and maximize biodiversity while providing them with an alternate source of livelihood and income. 

We're also connecting communities directly to carbon credit markets by working with them to develop one of the first REDD+ projects in India where gram sabhas (constitutional bodies of which every adult in the village is a member) can receive and manage carbon revenue directly. 

Forests are the best solution we have for sequestering carbon. Not only do they sequester carbon, but they also provide a host of other ecosystem benefits like biodiversity, prevention of soil erosion, groundwater recharge, habitats for endangered species. Forests are also an important source of livelihoods for over 200 million people in India and over 1 billion people globally. 

F4F is well-qualified to receive the ServiceNow prize because we work directly with communities to help them restore and protect forests as well as as provide them with the support needed to track forest cover and health over time, improve soil carbon sequestration, harvest sustainably and maximize biodiversity while providing them with an alternate source of livelihood and income. 

We're also connecting communities directly to carbon credit markets by working with them to develop one of the first REDD+ projects in India where gram sabhas (constitutional bodies of which every adult in the village is a member) can receive and manage carbon revenue directly. 

Forests are the best solution we have for sequestering carbon. Not only do they sequester carbon, but they also provide a host of other ecosystem benefits like biodiversity, prevention of soil erosion, groundwater recharge, habitats for endangered species. Forests are also an important source of livelihoods for over 200 million people in India and over 1 billion people globally. 

Yet precision forest tracking in the form of algorithms that identify trees, species, tree health, the number of trees, the amount of carbon sequestered in trees and the soil and soil quality from satellite or drone footage are rare and not widely used by on-ground practitioners while implementing programs. Most ecosystem benefits and carbon calculations are still being done manually. 

F4F hopes to automate the process of calculating ecosystem benefits and carbon stocks in forests by leveraging AI that will help drive more investment to this sector.