Celestial Green Ventures Project Implementation
The project area contains significant amounts of natural rainforest, which is under high threat of encroachment of extensive deforestation from surrounding areas.
The main objectives of the Celestial Green Ventures Project are to avoid the deforestation of its natural forests whilst ensuring social and economic benefits to the inhabitants, for their co-operation and participation in maintaining the REDD Project, its activities and helping to keep the forest in its natural state.
To achieve this, the project carried out the following actions:
- Held numerous workshops to communicate the benefits of participation in the project.
- Made regular visits to all communities as part of the on-the-ground monitoring activities of the project.
- Held community liaison meetings whilst visiting the communities, to listen to concerns and ideas from the community members and gathered details of their immediate and long-term requirements and expectations of the project benefits.
- Joined with local environmental organisations to develop a roll-out programme of providing clean drinking water
- Designed a solar photovoltaic system, specific to the conditions prevalent in the project area, and in such a manner for the inhabitants themselves (following appropriate training) to be able to install and maintain a safe supply of renewable energy.
- Opened a fully-manned project office in the local area, which helps and advises inhabitants on social issues and in co-operation with local organisations, educates on issues such as sustainable farming methods and waste management.
- Held regular open/public meetings for the local communities to report and discuss project implementation.
- Financially supported many of the local organisations, especially those working with young people.
Celestial Green Ventures Project Updates
The initial Celestial Green Ventures project achieved validation and verification in 2013, with further verification achieve in 2014. The on-site verification was carried out by Environmental Services Inc.
The whole team at Celestial Green Ventures and also the team on the ground within the project area are delighted to have achieved such a milestone. The benefits of implementing such an important REDD project are numerous; for the people that live there, for the biodiversity, flora and fauna, but most importantly the protection of the natural forests and their important role they play in the fight against climate change as a Natural Climate Solution.
Environmental Services Inc. are a leading voluntary carbon auditors based in Florida, USA and accredited by the American National Standards Institute under ISO 14065:2007 for greenhouse gas validation and verification bodies including: ISO 14064-3:2006, ISO 14065:2007, and validation/verification of assertions related to GHG emission reductions and removals at the project level for Land Use and Forestry (Group 3). These accreditations underline their competence to meet the stringent requirements of the voluntary carbon standard which demands independent, third-party validators and verifiers for assessing projects using the approved methodology for the issuance of carbon credits.
These milestones signified the initial success of the project. Achieving these verifications from such a highly regarded carbon audit organisation gave the team and the project the recognition it deserves.
Satellite Monitoring
Spatial data can play a vital role in REDD+ project monitoring and reporting. It can help to target efficient, transparent and systematic monitoring of the effectiveness of the REDD+ project activities and help identify areas that are most at risk of deforestation, or have the highest potential for contributing to carbon emissions if degraded or deforested.
To ensure Natural Climate Solutions are managed and monitored effectively and efficiently, it demands the use of innovation and technology. Celestial Green Ventures embraces the importance of technology in the effectiveness of environmental protection, and believes that by combining geospatial technologies with environmental protection is an important and innovative way to streamline the process of developing and implementing our projects. Satellite technology is one of the most important elements of successful and effective project monitoring for the Celestial Green Ventures.
Utilising the technologies that are now available is invaluable and crucial to the successful monitoring and reporting for the project. As a company, Celestial Green Ventures embraces any technology that mobilises resources to establish and maintain a truly worthwhile natural climate solution towards mitigating climate change.
Celestial Green Ventures uses satellite data for mapping, analysing and monitoring the REDD+ Project area. Multiple layers of spatial and environmental data are collated from resources such as PRODES, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ESA Globcover, MODIS, RapidEye, and other source, which are then amalgamated, quantified, interrogated and compared to provide quantitative and qualitative results.
Celestial Green Ventures incorporated these innovative solutions into the foundation of their project design and development process. Given the scale of the REDD+ Project, the use of satellite monitoring and reporting significantly reduces the time and cost resources required to carry out fundamental analysis and assessments of the project area.
Spatial data that is highly useful includes analysing and quantifying existing carbon stocks and project, indicators of potential risks, indicators for potential improvements. By compiling the data provides a wider benefit for project planning and implementation for the Celestial Green Ventures team, as it helps give a highly visual overview of the vast project area as well as the potential benefits of the project actions.
