Reforesting with Maya Nut trees (Brosimum alicastrum) alleviates poverty, malnutrition and food insecurity in the Americas while providing affordable carbon offsets for individuals, companies and governments.
Already calculated your carbon footprint?
Enter your tonnes of CO2 and get prices for verified carbon credit projects of any size on the Carbon Marketplace.
The project works directly with The Maya Nut Institute and rural communities in Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua to establish Maya Nut “food forests”.
The programme has been awarded numerous awards, including the most prestigious Saint Andrews Prize for the Environment.
Tree Buddying
Our May Nut Tree programme incorporates "Tree Buddying". This means for each tree you pledge we also offset one tCO2 through a Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) project.
This ensures your carbon offsetting
- is fully verified
- meets international standards
- meets BSI's PAS 2060 specification on carbon neutrality
- meets the Carbon Footprint Standard and
- continues to take additional CO2 out of the atmosphere during the life of the tree
in addition to delivering all the other great benefits of the Maya Nut Tree programme.
The benefits for rural people and the environment
- FOOD SECURITY AND POVERTY ALLEVIATION - Each native rainforest Maya Nut tree can provide hundreds of pounds of food that falls to the ground every year, in the form of abundant delicious and nutritious “nuts” which are easy to process and store. The nuts can provide all balanced food needs for entire villages, especially in times of drought when standard agriculture fails.
- AVOIDED RAINFOREST DESTRUCTION - The tree planting programmes work to educate local women on Maya Nut cooking recipes to feed their families. Women now have an added incentive to protect existing rainforest, and more motivation to plant and nurture new Maya Nut trees.
- FOOD and HABITAT for wildlife - Keystone rainforest amimals depend on Maya Nut for food - 85% of neotropical birds and wildlife depend on Maya Nut fruit, nuts and leaves for food
- NUTRITION FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN The reforestation programmes include a Maya Nut School lunch programme, providing jobs for local women and nutrition and education for local children.
- MEDICINE - For asthma, anemia, high blood pressure, arthritis and osteoporosis.
- FODDER for livestock - Maya Nut leaves are an excellent alternative to grass pasture for tropical cattle ranchers.
- ECOSYSTEM SERVICES - Maya Nut Trees provide soil and water protection, carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, ecosystem resilience to climate change.
- CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION - Each Maya nut tree sequesters/absorbs carbon dioxide as it grows.
Internationally endorsed
- The Maya Nut Institute partners with and is endorsed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and also the following institutions:
- The Ford Foundation
- Heifer Project International
- The World Wildlife Fund
- Rainforest Alliance
- The United Nations Small Grants Programme
- Global Environment Facility
- IUCN - International Union for the Conservation of Nature
- Guatemalan Ministries of Education and Agriculture
- National Institute of Forests, Guatemala
- Re-Green Guatemala Program
- Kimberly-Clark, El Salvador
- El Salvadoran Ministry of the Environment
- Enterprise for the Americas Fund
- German Development Agency
- Embassies of Luxemburgh, Norway and Germany
- Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species, Bioversity International