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WeForest

About WeForest

WeForest is a science-based international non-profit organization. They want to engage companies in fighting global warming through forest landscape restoration in tropical areas. VP Capital chose WeForest as a partner because they do much more than just planting trees. The organization makes great efforts in the field of guidance and training of local farmers to tackle the problem of deforestation on a structural basis and to assure them of an alternative income by, for example, starting up honey production.

Read more about our initiatives with WeForest below or visit our partner page.

Making deforestation redundant by involving local farmers

The trees that we will plant with WeForest are part of their Zambia Luanshya project. In Zambia, around 300,000 hectares of forest are still being destroyed every year. Because of climate change, food insecurity and economic instability, mining, coal production and agriculture are often the only sources of income for the local population. These are anything but sustainable practices because they cause deforestation and soil degradation. The Luanshya district in particular is suffering greatly and that is why WeForest wants to do something with the support of companies such as VP Capital. By planting trees and achieving forest restoration, local biodiversity and soil restoration are encouraged so that no desertification occurs in the long term and the income of local residents remains assured.

Tools and training for local farmers

But WeForest goes even further and provides local farmers with tools and training to diversify their sources of income while planting and protecting local forests for the long term. To ensure a short term income for them, WeForest for example provides beehives and beekeeping training courses so that farmers learn to produce honey. They also connect the farmers with local businesses to ensure that their honey is sold. Tthis way the project becomes more sustainable and the farmers more autonomous, so that in the future they will be less dependent on contributions from WeForest. This is entirely in line with our vision of making a structural contribution to sustainable progress.

Compensating our CO2 emissions by planting over 80 thousand trees in Zambia

VP Capital developed a sustainability model to make the existing portfolio more sustainable and to contribute with new investments to the progress towards a more sustainable society. In this way we want to reduce the negative effects of our own companies. One way we do this is through ESG: ecological, social and governance factors that measure the sustainability of a company. We organize an annual ESG scan of our own companies, in which, among other things, the CO2 emissions of each company are calculated. We then draw up a roadmap for each company with concrete measures to reduce them. VP Capital has decided to compensate the remaining CO2 of these own companies centrally by planting trees through WeForest. In this way we effectively create new sources of CO2 reduction with a view to the long term. We are now starting with the planting of 80,597 trees in Zambia in order to eventually offset about 10,000 tons of CO2 by 2018. In addition, we previously made a first donation to WeForest with which 5333 trees were planted in a project in Brazil.
Since 2019, we can call ourselves CO2 neutral.