Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration

The first round Verified Emission Reduction Payment transferred to five legally organized and certified forest cooperatives of Soddo Community Managed Forestry and Agroforestry (CMFA) Project in the presence of H.E Kebede Yimam, State Minster of Ministry of Environment and Forest, REDD+, Regional and Zonal officials, on February 12, 2015. Started in 2006 Soddo project covers some 503 hectares of degraded land and aims to sequester about 189,027t CO2 in 35 years crediting period. It has signed an Emission Reduction Purchase Agreement with Forest Finance, a German based company and now received the first round payment nearly 872,754.00 ETB (USD 41,559.75) for 6157t CO₂ emission through World Vision Ethiopia. During the event H.E Kebede Yimam said, “We learnt a lot from this project and the government will work hard to scale up its best practices.” On the same day, the project inaugurated H.E Roman Tesfaye, FDRE First Lady, Worknesh Mekonnen, World Vision Ethiopia Deputy National Director the ecotourism site established in collaboration with the cooperatives intended to increase the flow of visitors to the project area and as a means of creating an additional income for the cooperatives. The Soddo Forestry Project is World Vision Ethiopia’s second project in the nation to earn carbon credits next to Humbo. In this occasion it was also announced that in the next five years the carbon revenue from the Soddo CMFA Project will be utilized to addresses problem priorities of target communities, such as building bridges, school rehabilitation, purchase of grinding mills and other food security interventions.