Stolt Tankers and its partners are delighted to provide an update on how their donation to WeForest is helping vital reforestation projects in the Desa’a Forest, Ethiopia.
In February this year, Stolt Tankers announced that the Stolt Tankers Joint Service (STJS) Pool, together with its partners NYK Line, Tufton, and Farvatn Capital, had jointly donated USD $100,000 to two non-profit organisations, WeForest and One Tree Planted, both of which are focused on reforestation, carbon-absorption and environmental-impact projects.
The STJS Pool is the first tanker pool to implement a Green Bunker Procurement Fund with proceeds fully dedicated to carbon reduction, fuel efficiency and environmental initiatives.
The funds are supporting two WeForest projects, one of which is the reforestation of the Desa’a Forest in Northern Ethiopia.
Local communities are actively involved in the projects, and are trained to manage planting, seedling development, creation of water bunds and ponds and even related activities such as beekeeping to generate income from forest-friendly activities.
"Community participation during planting time (July and August) was incredible," reports the WeForest Ethiopia team on their website. "Often, up to 1,000 people at once were walking to the planting sites, carrying seedlings and planting tools. Sometimes over 50,000 seedlings were planted in a day."
WeForest works with communities, local organisations and non-governmental organisations to develop reforestation projects that restore degraded landscapes and remove the excess carbon from our atmosphere. It maps and monitors every hectare under restoration via GPS and its forestry and science teams conduct surveys to track growth, tree density, survival rate and species diversity. The social impacts of their projects are also assessed.
The Stolt Tankers partnership is also supporting WeForest on their Philippines’ Indigenous Bamboo and Native Tree Reforestation project, which will remove 500,000 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.
