Eastern Colombia's Orinoco savanna, known as the Orinoquia, holds immense potential for afforestation with native species. This region, about half the size of Germany, offers vast tracts of land for carbon sequestration and the production of precious wood products. It's also home to unique and proprietary species of wildlife and flora, some of which are found only in the Amazon.
The degradation of the Orinoquia's savanna woodlands and gallery forests, driven by unnaturally frequent wildfires caused by human activity, has led to habitat loss, decreased biodiversity, reduced tree cover, and disruption of the hydrological cycle. These impacts have also hindered gene flow for both wildlife and plants.
Today, investors interested in afforestation for carbon sequestration are increasingly moving away from monoculture plantations. This shift is largely due to challenges in proving the additionality of species like Eucalyptus, Australian Acacia, and Pinus. At ClearBlue Markets, we’ve found that both project investors and carbon credit buyers now favor projects that involve native species, especially mixed-species plantations.
As carbon markets face greater scrutiny and more stringent standards, carbon registry programs are raising the bar for how methodologies—and by extension, VVBs and investors—assess carbon projects. A key trend is the enforcement of stricter safeguards to ensure project activities don’t negatively affect the environment or local communities.
Companies trading carbon credits or purchasing credits from multi-decade projects want to ensure their environmental commitments withstand scrutiny. They also need to be confident that necessary safeguards are built into project development.
Environmental safeguards for carbon credit projects often require evidence that project activities do not convert non-degraded natural ecosystems or impair hydrological functions. In short, the project must demonstrate that the areas involved are already degraded.
When restoring degraded lands through afforestation, reforestation, and revegetation (ARR) or wetland restoration and conservation (WRC) activities, project proponents must show that the project restores the area to a native ecosystem type representative of the region.
To prove this, a combination of remote sensing, aerial imagery, modeling, literature review, historical photographic and land use/land cover data, vegetation and wildlife surveys, soil assessments, and ecosystem diagnostics can be used. Additionally, proving additionality is essential—demonstrating that the project scenario will lead to greater vegetative cover than a "business as usual" scenario.
In our latest white paper, Close to Nature Forestry in the Orinoco Savannas of Colombia, ClearBlue Markets partnered with INVERBOSQUES, a Colombian afforestation company, to explore how a close-to-nature approach could transform the region. This paper represents the most comprehensive effort to date by our local team in South America and highlights ClearBlue’s expertise in due diligence and technical support, both in the region and globally.
This paper is available in English for download at the link below.
It is also available in Spanish:
ClearBlue's services for project developers and investors
Due Diligence
Our teams have helped investors across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe (including Ukraine) evaluate potential sites for nature-based solutions (NbS) projects.
Feasibility Studies
We assist project developers in assessing whether an area can serve as an NbS project and determining what’s required to ensure it produces high-quality credits and co-benefits aligned with the area's social and ecological potential.
Technical Support
ClearBlue provides technical forestry and agricultural expertise, including species selection, land mapping, zoning, carbon yield modeling, cost analysis, silvicultural treatment design, plant stock procurement, and nursery development.
Visit our web page or contact us for more information about our project development services.