Cultural Ecosystem Services Enhance Investments in Other Ecosystem Services: Carbon Credits in Haiti
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Authors
Greene, Gretchen
McGrath, Deborah
Issue Date
2025-05-25
Type
Book chapter
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This chapter demonstrates how the cultural ecosystem services of education, sense of place, and inspiration served to strengthen a carbon sequestration project involving tree planting and maintenance in Haiti’s Central Plateau, a region in which poverty and deforestation are tightly intertwined. Where other carbon offset credit programs have not lived up to anticipated sequestration goals, this project – with its emphasis on cultural ecosystem services – succeeded in sequestering carbon and improving small-holder incomes while provisioning other regulating ecosystem services as co-benefits that increase agricultural resiliency. The case study involves a place-based educational program developed collaboratively by a small liberal arts college in the U.S., a Haitian non-profit organization and a community of small farmers who produce carbon credits in shade coffee agroforestry systems. The carbon credits were verified by Haitian and Sewanee students, building workforce and technical skills, while educating about carbon and approaches that build resiliency to climate change. A central focus of the program was not only to help farmers make more secure the place they value, but also to immerse students in place-based learning about historical injustices between the Global North and South. Thus, working with Haitian farmers to establish these agroecosystems inspired students to not only act towards effective solutions to climate mitigation, but to pursue other means of addressing inequality and injustices.
Description
Citation
Publisher
University of the South