Partner Forest Program
Create a Partner Forest program to support tropical forest conservation by community-led enterprises.
A “Partner Forest” is a faraway (usually tropical) forest connected to a city through a meaningful and mutually beneficial exchange. The city supports the partner forest by directing its purchasing power towards a product or service that the forest provides (e.g., shade-grown coffee, climate benefits, ecotourism). The goal of the Partner Forest program is to visibly support a tropical forest that provides direct benefits to the city and raise awareness of those benefits among city residents.
Establish a partnership with conservation oriented forest enterprises to support restoration and conservation of tropical forests. These partnerships are ideally based on mutually-beneficial relationships, such as product, service, or knowledge exchanges. For more information please refer to the Partner Forest program's website. For example:
The Brooklyn Bridge Forest is an ongoing initiative in which New York City would source wood for the aging pedestrian boardwalk of the Brooklyn Bridge from a community forest in Guatemala to support their forest conservation efforts.
Match conservation and restoration efforts in the city with conservation in faraway forests. For example:
The London Enfield Council woodland restoration project is developing such a partnership on restoration with the city of Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea). For every tree planted within the city, a city could support parallel restoration efforts in a tropical forest.