Native Trees to Restore Salinized Soils and Sequester Carbon

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In 2006, in Colonia El Simbolar, a town located 1,150 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, farmers struggled to make ends meet and large amounts of land were abandoned. Former farmers of cotton, soybean, fruit, and vegetable survived on social assistance. Part of the problem was land degradation due to high soil salinity. But the producers also lacked education and the capital to invest in agriculture. blanco, or the white carob tree, which produces wood, flour, and honey. It is a leguminous tree that improves the soil’s structure, texture and organic matter content, and reduces surface salt. Nearly 7,000 hectares have been reforested in six years, and the nurseries have generated 1,750,000 white carob seedlings.

For GADE, community leadership gets priority at every stage. Local people, particularly women, who previously had no knowledge about tree nurseries, now construct, prepare and plant seeds, and prune, irrigate, and maintain the nurseries. The community, especially youth, have been mobilized to protect the environment.

The project has set a precedent for large-scale native forestation and carbon sequestration and is a prototype in efforts to fight severe desertification in Latin America and the rest of the world. Project organizers estimate that 324,000 tons of carbon dioxide may be sequestered over 20 years.

To address these challenges, Grupo Ambiental par el Desarrollo (GADE) trained the community to plant a resilient native tree called algarrobo