December 14, 2016

Celebrating New Beginnings

2016 Highlights

It’s Cool Earth’s tenth birthday next year and we’re going for a step change in the way we operate. In preparation, this year we’ve welcomed new villages, new team members, and new ways of working. Together we’ll save a million acres in 2017.

“Everyone has been able to share the little that we know. We have been able to nourish ourselves from the experience of everyone, the Hondurans, the Ashaninka, the Awajun. We have been able to take the best bits to practice our food gardens in Amazonas.”

Josue Morales,
Awajun, Peru

Refining our model

Throughout this year our Programmes team have been working on refining our practices and producing an open source version of the Cool Earth model. This ‘toolbox’ will work anywhere in the world and will be available to any community who want to save their forest. Watch this space - we’ll be telling you much more next year.

Knowledge sharing

The first thing Cool Earth ever did was ask local people the best way to save their rainforest. We took their ideas and shared them from Peru to Papua New Guinea. This year our partners shared their knowledge through community health training, and a trip to Honduras to learn how the Inga Foundation use a rainforest plant to improve soil fertility. Thanks to our Forest of Ideas campaign, next year we’ll share knowledge further than ever before.

Technology

From the simple to the cutting edge, technology has helped our partners and us work more efficiently in 2016. 3G signal in our Orangerie Bay partnership means we can get real time updates, better camera traps and monitoring equipment has improved our evaluations, and our team are using Slack to communicate across continents.

Monitoring & Evaluation

Proving our impact and cost effectiveness is crucial, which is why in 2016 we spent time improving how we monitor and evaluate our partnerships. We were also assessed this year by Giving What We Can, a leading charity advisor, who found us to be more cost effective than any other charity working on Climate Change.

New team members

Thanks to a generous grant from the Michael Uren Foundation, we expanded our teams in the UK, Peru, and Papua New Guinea. In 2016 we welcomed Andy, Basil, Buffy, Alix, Daisy, Deylar, Edgar, Efrain, Isaac, Jaime, Josue, Lawrence, Lewis, Liz, Natalie, Ruth, and Sarah to Cool Earth. From biodiversity monitoring to video editing, this group of smart people make up the best rainforest saving team in the world.

Image showing children with a 'Welcome to Wabumari'

New partnerships

2016 saw a brand new partnership with Wabumari village in Papua New Guinea. We’re also heading up the partnership of organisations developing the Queen’s Commonwealth Canopy, laying the groundwork for many more forest conservations projects across the Commonwealth.

This year also saw an exciting new global partnership with Sushisamba, as well as many new Trusts and Foundations including the Disney Conservation Fund, who will all be contributing to saving more rainforest than ever in 2017.