From Green Thumbs to Green Paws:
The mission of Lion Landscapes is “to make large carnivore conservation valuable to local and global communities.” Lion Landscapes primarily works in southeast Africa, focusing on five large carnivore species: lion, leopard, cheetah, African wild dog, and spotted hyena. They approach conservation by developing community-based solutions, integrating local environmental knowledge into their science-driven conservation efforts.
This collaborative approach is how Lion Landscapes is creating long-lasting coexistence solutions that will benefit the people and wildlife in these diverse landscapes.
Biocarbon Partners (BCP) is a for-profit company that follows REDD+ conservation methods, a mechanism designed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to mitigate emissions from destruction of forests. The mission of BCP is to “develop award-winning forest carbon offset projects in areas of global biodiversity significance to conserve Africa’s wildlife legacy landscapes while delivering life changing community impacts under REDD+.” Forests in southern Africa are facing pressure from local communities due to agriculture, charcoal production, and logging demands, and the resulting deforestation releases carbon stored in the trees. BCP is working to shift the communities’ mindsets away from generating income through deforestation to generating income through conservation.
With the REDD+ projects, local communities can generate revenue through the sale of carbon emissions offsets. BCP’s process starts and ends with the communities local to the protected forests. Local buy-in is important, and BCP works with local leaders to decide which forest to protect under their project structure. Once the forest has been selected, BCP calculates emissions reductions as a result of conservation by estimating the amount of greenhouse gases that would be released due to deforestation. Using the Verified Carbon Standard (Verra) verification process, BCP is issued Verified Carbon Units (VCU) emissions offsets, which can then be sold.
