Our story
For eleven years, dreams, knowledge and commitments have added up to consolidate the Community REDD+ Portfolio in the Biogeographic Chocó.
A portfolio that thrills us from Acandí to Tumaco has been possible thanks to the commitment and work of the Mutatá Indigenous Council and the 19 Community Councils that are part of the 9 REDD+ projects: Bajo Mira y Frontera, ACAPA, Cajambre, Bajo Calima, La Plata-Bahía Málaga, Concosta, Sivirú, Usaragá, Pizarro, Piliza, ACABA, Río Pepé, Montaño, Vigía de Curvaradó-Santa Rosa del Limón, Domingodó, Apartadó- Buena Vista, Chicao, La Madre and Cocomasur.
During this journey, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) set a learning path that served as a compass for guiding the strengthening process with communities. Their committed work and the resources invested were crucial in shaping the Community REDD+ Portfolio into what it is now. Its management and accompaniment with Fondo Acción continued until 2018 through the Connected Landscapes program, leaving significant advances that paved the way for great achievements and results.
Fondo Acción joined efforts, abilities and resources to boost the project’s objectives, strengthening communication and trust with each of the participating communities, understanding the dynamics of their territories to generate real actions aligned with their contexts, culture and traditions.
In 2019, the Sustainable Colombia Fund and its donors, as well as the Inter-American Development Bank, joined this journey of commitments, learning and challenges, with the conviction that working with the communities of the Pacific could build viable territories.
Each of these actors has played an important role in this story with the goal of extending it in time and promoting it as a sustainable option for the families of the Colombian Pacific.
Here we narrate what the process has been like and the present the most important facts. We invite you to learn more about this story by clicking on the following sections:
Map, Backpack and boat: a Tour of the Colombian Pacific.
The Colombian forests and jungles have ancestral guardians that co-inhabit the land, who experience their territory from within, because it’s a part of their daily life.
To Fondo Acción, building trust with communities and understanding their unique traits was crucial. This could only be achieved on-site: listening to people, seeing and experiencing the paths. To that end, they teamed up with Cocomasur to design a tour through the territories. Long trails, hours of travel… kilometers separated them, but stories brought them together. They held training sessions about REDD+, allowing Cocomasur representatives to bond with other communities through their own experience, leadership and skills.
In 2015, BioRedd+ came to an end. It left eight validated REDD+ projects in place, all set to move forward to the next phase with the implementation of productive projects that aimed to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and, finally, to complete the verification phase of the tons of carbon emissions avoided.
Thanks to Fondo Acción’s previous experience in Acandí, the work with BioRedd+ and the progress made in Caquetá through the Connected Landscapes Program, the communities and donor chose Fondo Acción as project executor, and a special Connected Landscapes chapter for the Colombian Pacific region was launched to carry out the validation procedures.
