Humbo: Ethiopia's First UN-Certified Carbon Forest

World Vision Ethiopia partnered with communities on Mount Damota in southern Ethiopia to regrow forest on hillsides stripped bare by decades of deforestation and overgrazing. Using Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, villagers coppiced living tree stumps instead of planting seedlings from scratch, reviving 2,728 hectares of degraded land. In 2009 Humbo became Africa's first project registered under the UN Clean Development Mechanism, and carbon credit sales have since channeled over $1.18 million directly to local cooperatives for grain mills, warehouses and microfinance. Flooding that once regularly swept the valley has stopped, and the project now touches an estimated 388,000 people across the wider Humbo area.