What we do
We meet regularly with
- Monthly knowledge sharing sessions with experts from within and outside of the community.
- “Getting to know you” monthly meet-ups for new members to meet more seasoned community participants.
- In-person meetings at around particular events and conferences, such as climate weeks or COPs.
We are also prototyping local and regional meetings online and in-person: Brazilian hub, Ghanaian chat, East Africa meet-up.
One of the main objectives of the Art of Forests is to offer a place where members can openly share their successes and failures with others so that all can learn and scale their projects more efficiently.
Shared learning and collective problem solving underpin the spirit of all our gatherings — we strive to work beyond and without the more typical dominant biases of self-interest and competitive advantage dominating specialist collectives so far.
We have many experts in our community. Some of those invited to share with the rest of the community include:
Alex de Soza Kinzer
on large scale landscape development
Eric Wilburn
on the financing of nature based solutions
John Beckett
on the reforestation of Ireland
Patrick Worms
on agroforestry
Tony Rinaudo
on farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR)
Bill Liao
on the direct connection between trees, clouds and rain
Florent Kaiser
on the reforestation of the Andes in Latin America
Neal Spackman
on blue carbon and mangrove restoration
on community engagement and benefits in restoration work
- We run regular online meetings in response to emerging needs for shared learning and understanding in the face of new challenges. With the resulting creation of dedicated work streams within the community:
- Land Rights and Tenure
- Local Community Engagement
- Financing and Scaling
- Biodiversity
- MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, and Validation)
- We have also experimented with “diagnostic sessions” where members bring specific challenges of their own for feedback and advice from other members. Some of these have included 'Spreadsheets for data management 101' and 'Demystifying Geospatial Data'.
-
Establishing a unified voice — representing project operators, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples, the Art of Forests aims to positively influence global attitudes to project financing, development, and implementation. This involves:
- advocating for adjustments and changes in standard setting for carbon projects and global policy making — bringing the voice from the ground in discussion on NDCs or at global gatherings.
- bridging the gap of understanding among financiers, investors and funders, between their needs and the increasingly difficult reality of project operators on the ground.
- promoting and supporting the development of new financing structures for future projects, ensuring a fairer share of benefits is received by local land stewards.
- Alliance of Alliances - we merged with the Carbon Commons in November 2022 and have been guest observers or members of the Global Regeneration CoLab, the Eco-restoration Alliance, the Global Restoration Collaborative and the MRV Collective.
