Rainforest Alliance

The main objectives of the Iberpapel Silvipastural System on Degraded Land Project include wood production, land restoration and carbon sequestration through afforestation activities. This project comprises a total of 4,691 ha of land that has a history of agriculture use with intensive tillage or grazing by beef cattle. These activities have caused soil erosion, in many cases severe, and land degradation. This project activity is implemented on degraded lands, which are expected to continue to degrade in the absence of the project and hence the land cannot be expected to revert to a non-degraded state without human intervention.

Forest plantations will be completed by year 8 of the project and forests will be replanted after clear-cut harvest during the 60 year project lifetime. Forest plantations for obtaining pulpwood and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have been established since 2004. These plantations have been designed to allow grazing by cattle between tree rows, and as part of the silvipastural system, pastures are seeded in the inter-row spaces.

The Iberpapel Silvipastural System on Degraded Land is classified as a VCS “project”, in terms of its scale. It will remove a total of 884,732 tCO2 during the 60 year project lifetime, or an average of 14,746 tCO2 per year. Planted forests will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in different carbon pools (living above-ground and below-ground biomass, soil organic carbon, litter, and dead wood).

As part of the Project an environmental management system will be implemented, and practices will be compatible with FSC® standard. All properties will be certified by the FSC, currently, more than half of the sites are already certified and the other half is in the process of being standardized for certification. The project will result in a significant contribution to sustainable development of Uruguay, mainly through: i) increased employment and quality of employment; ii) rural development (decentralization); iii) increased gross value of production; iv) improved fiscal balance; v) biodiversity preservation; vi) improvement and preservation of soil quality; and vi) landscape improvement, among other benefits.