Written by Thomas Armitt, Senior Manager, Climate & Biodiversity at Planeterra
I’ve just returned from two weeks in the field, visiting Community Tree Growing partner sites across Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar. This trip was part of our ongoing tree growing activities implemented in partnership with G Adventures and Evaneos, and my objectives going in were straightforward:
- Verify the impacts our projects have been reporting
- Assess three years of tree growth
- Refine Planeterra’s verification methodology so we can keep our promises to our Travel Partners and to the communities we work with.
What I came home with was something bigger than a verification report. I want to share it.
I thought I understood the impact. I didn’t.
I’ve spent years working at the intersection of Community Tourism and conservation, and I’ve always believed that growing the right trees, in the right places, with the right people, creates real change.
But nothing that I could have prepared in a verification template could have prepared me for standing in these landscapes and seeing, first-hand, how far the ripple effects of growing these trees travel.
A tree, it turns out, is never just a tree…
Three countries, three different stories.
It was my first time travelling in East Africa. My experience of Africa has always revolved around the North, West and Central regions of the continent, and so this journey was an eye opener from a socio-cultural and environmental perspective.
However, what really struck me was the diversity of impacts that can be experienced based on the type of tree growing project I visited. In three different countries, three different stories were shared that educated me on the importance of growing trees that directly benefit communities.
In Kenya, I met smallholder farmers whose trees, after three years, are now producing fruit.
What struck me wasn’t just the yield, it was the pride. These are people who have watched something they nurtured become tangible, useful, alive. And it’s not only about the fruit: the same trees have measurably improved the health of their livestock, feeding into a cycle of resilience that touches almost every part of a household’s life.
In Madagascar, the story that stayed with me was about what happens when the tourism economy suddenly stops. When a crisis hits and visitors disappear, the trees don’t.
Trees continue to provide an economic lifeline for the wider community, an alternative source of income and stability that doesn’t depend on who’s arriving at the airport that month.
In a sector as exposed to shocks as tourism, that kind of buffer matters enormously.
And in Tanzania, I was presented with the story that surprised me most. Trees planted along land boundaries are helping to reduce conflict over land ownership among Maasai communities, acting as permanent, living reference markers for where one Boma’s (the place where Massai set up their dwelling) land ends and another’s begins.
I hadn’t fully appreciated that a tree growing programme could double as a peacebuilding tool, but there it was.
Beyond these headline examples, I encountered a much larger web of interconnected impact:
- Women’s empowerment
- Food security
- Soil erosion stabilisation
- Flood prevention
- Drought resilience
- Simple protection from unforgiving heat.
These benefits don’t sit in isolation. They reinforce one another, and, in the right conditions, they last.
The numbers behind the story.
Verification trips like this exist because impact claims need to be tested against ground truth, not just reported and repeated. So here’s where things stand.
Over the last three and a half years, Planeterra has facilitated the growth of 6.3 million trees, and counting. These trees are estimated to be benefiting over 200,000 people, directly and indirectly, through employment, additional income opportunities, shade, improved crop yields, livestock health, flood and drought impact mitigation, food and water security, and the list goes on…
The focus of this programme is to enhance community resilience to the impacts of climate change and improve wellbeing through biodiversity regeneration.
The reality is that the people most impacted upon – and disproportionately so – by the impacts of climate change are the communities that Planeterra is in service to. This is why this work is important!
Of those 6.3 million trees, 2.6 million have now been growing for three years, and we estimate around 40% of these have reached maturity, meaning they’re beginning to sequester carbon from the atmosphere in earnest.
Applying a weighted calculation with integrity adjustments drawn from established carbon verification methodologies, we estimate that these mature trees alone are currently sequestering approximately 31,600 tCO2e per year, a figure that will only grow as more of the trees mature.
And, for transparency’s sake, I’ll also share the other side of the ledger: my trip itself emitted an estimated 4.3 tCO2e. It’s a reminder that field verification, while essential, isn’t free of footprint, and that we should hold ourselves to the same standard of honesty we ask of the projects we assess.
What happens next
This trip wasn’t just about confirming what’s working. It was about learning what needs to change, and building that learning into how we operate. Three things are front of mind as we move forward:
- Refine our Measurement, Reporting, and Verification methodology. The realities I saw on the ground need to be integrated into how we monitor, report and verify, both from a reporting perspective and in how our field teams operate day to day.
- Recalibrate for ground-based realities. A programme built on projections is only as good as its ability to adapt when it meets the real world. We need to adjust our approach so it can scale without losing the nuance that makes it effective.
- Keep backing the right partners. Ultimately, this is about continuing to support the organisations and communities growing trees that create meaningful impact, for people and for landscapes, and doing so with the rigour our Travel Partners and supporters deserve.
A closing thought
It’s easy, from a desk, to think of tree growing programmes in terms of hectares, survival rates and carbon removal.
Necessary metrics, all of them. But spending two weeks walking through the farms, boundaries and forests where these trees actually live reminded me why we do this work in the first place: not for the numbers, but for the people whose lives are quietly, steadily, being changed by something as simple as a tree taking root.
And in that vein, I wanted to invite you all to take a pause and ask yourselves a question: What positive impact can I have by allowing something – an idea, a project, an act of kindness – to take root?
