Comparing carbon offsets and livelihood benefits in a long‐term reforestation project: Agroforestry versus native timber versus enrichment planting

Abstract

Abstract Indigenous People and Local Communities (IPLC) can play an important role in reforestation for climate change mitigation while providing environmental and livelihood benefits. However, there is a lack of direct comparison between different reforestation design's carbon uptake potential and their relevance to community reforestation. We evaluate the carbon capture and survival of the four most common reforestation designs in a 14‐year‐long project in an Emberá community in eastern Panama. We look at native timber mixtures and monocultures, agroforestry, and natural regrowth with enrichment planting. To explain the differences between plots, we compare design, management and environmental characteristics using redundancy analyses (RDA). We then contextualize our results with the project leader's perspectives of success using interviews and workshops. In the first decade, mixtures and monocultures of timber stored on average roughly 3× more carbon than agroforestry and enrichment planting (140 tCO2/ha compared to 40 tCO2/ha and 53 tCO2/ha). The project design had the largest influence on carbon storage and survival with an explanatory power of 31% followed by management and environmental characteristics (14% and 2% respectively). The largest threat to the survival and growth was the risk of fire which caused mortality in more than 2/3 of the plots. Some damage was offset by natural regrowth which accounted for 34% of the total carbon, but the participants generally perceived natural regrowth as being “dirty.” They had a strong preference for agroforestry, particularly coffee (Coffea spp.), a crop with negligible carbon value, but high economic value. ‘Practical implication’: The findings underscore the need to balance carbon sequestration with local economic preferences, integrate community input, mitigate environmental risks and adopt long‐term, holistic approaches for effective reforestation projects.