The project brings together different activities promoting sustainable forest management. One of the most important goals is to regulate and improve the quantity and quality of underground stores of freshwater. This water is used for biodiversity conservation.

The program’s activities involve ecological restoration through assisted natural regeneration and reforestation in the watershed of the Chinchiná River, located in the central-south area of the Department of Caldas, Colombia.

A total of 4,540 hectares are protected. The project also aims to increase biodiversity and improve the connectivity of those strategic ecosystems previously damaged by agriculture, grazing and massive deforestation. As a result, a decrease in greenhouse gases emissions is achieved due to greater CO2 absorption derived from biomass conservation and burning avoidance. This mitigation reaches 36,000 tCO2e per annum.

IMPACTS

Environmental

• Soil erosion and mudslides (causing significant problems to the main highway between Manizales and Bogotá) are reduced.
• Protect soil use: overgrazing of the land is reduced, while agriculture productivity is maintained.
• Agroforestry systems allow for the production of timber, biomass energy while maintaining the essential ecological services.
• Run-off waters will be retained in the ecosystem, allowing their slow infiltration and storage in the soil and gradual release, avoiding water shortage in the dry season and reducing flooding.
• Reduction of deforestation due to sustainable forest management.
• Biodiversity conservation, the Mountain Tapir, Tiger Cat, Spectable Bear and Gray-bellied Night Monkey are some of the endangered species in the project area.

Social

• Creation of stable and well-remunerated employment.
• Improves the living conditions of the local communities by guaranteeing the supply of freshwater to the region’s inhabitants.
• Training and education workshops, which will increase the knowledge and transfer of silvicultural and monitoring technologies.
• Economic activities are diversified to cover wood production and sales of environmental services.

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