Winrock International | Innovations Newsletter, June 2012

June 2012

Winrock Farmer-to-Farmer volunteer Jeff Embry was featured as part of a video from the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute that highlighted the philanthropic legacy of Winthrop Rockefeller. Watch the full video online.

Winrock’s American Carbon Registry (ACR) has launched its APX-powered registry system, the first tailored specifically to meet regulatory requirements for the California compliance market. With the registry launch and ACR’s official application submitted to the California Air Resources Board (ARB) for approval as an offset project registry, ACR is immediately open to accept listing of projects developed using ARB’s compliance offset protocols. For details presented via webinar on the process for listing compliance offset projects on ACR, view the presentation and the recorded webinar.

Managed grazing can be a highly profitable business, with low inputs and high margins. On July 19, The Wallace Center’s National Good Food Network will present a webinar featuring an overview of the farming techniques, a case study of a very successful business, and information about a new apprenticeship program. Sign up for the webinar today.

Winrock volunteers share their experiences in interviews about their USAID Farmer-to-Farmer assignments. Read the blog entry and watch the video on the Winrock Volunteers blog.

Winrock International’s work creating improved livelihoods in Moldova was featured in Argidius Foundation’s 2011 annual report. View report and read the story.

InterAction made Winrock's Multiple-Use Water Services video the featured video on their website this week. Watch the video to learn how we can keep the water flowing.

Are you interested in working at Winrock? Search current openings and post your resume. Would you like to volunteer with Winrock? Learn more about new opportunities for volunteers.

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New data and methods paint clearer picture of emissions from tropical deforestation

New data and methods paint clearer picture of emissions from tropical deforestation.

A team led by researchers at Winrock International, has developed an estimate of gross carbon emissions from tropical deforestation for the early 2000s that is considerably lower than other recently published estimates.

The Winrock team, which included Drs. Nancy Harris and Sandra Brown of Winrock, as well as scientists from Applied GeoSolutions, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and University of Maryland, combined the best available spatially consistent datasets on gross forest loss and forest carbon stocks to track emissions from deforestation in millions of individual map pixels. Their methods focus on carbon losses to the atmosphere and do not include regrowth, which sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. The resulting gross emissions estimate of 0.81 billion metric tons of carbon emitted per year, with a statistically derived 90 percent prediction interval of 0.57-1.22 billion metric tons, is approximately one third of previously published estimates and represents just 10 percent of total global anthropogenic carbon emissions over the time period analyzed. The findings are published in the journal Science.

Two countries – Brazil and Indonesia – produced the highest emissions between 2000 and 2005, and accounted for 55 percent of total emissions from tropical deforestation. Nearly 40 percent of all forest loss in the study region was concentrated in the dry tropics, but accounted for only 17 percent of total carbon emissions, reflecting low carbon stocks in these forests compared to tropical moist forests.

Read the full press release or visit Winrock's website for more information and a link to the published article.

Congressional delegation meets with LRA victims on NUDEIL road site

Congressional delegation meets with LRA victims on NUDEIL road site.

On May 28, Sen. Christopher Coons of Delaware, along with Reps. Karen Bass and Adam Smith of California and Washington, respectively, visited AdyedaPatek Bar Road with the staff of the NUDEIL program in Gulu, Uganda. Also in attendance were representatives from USAID including the Acting Mission Director-John Mark Winfield, the Assistant Administrator for Africa-Earl Gast, as well as staff members of Sen. Coons.

The road is part of the Winrock-implemented NUDEIL Program, funded by USAID, which aims to work through the districts in the north to provide infrastructural development for the region. NUDEIL links improved local governance and community decision making with the provision of social service infrastructure through labor-intensive construction methods.

The delegation visited AdyedaPatek Bar Road located in Patek Parish. One of NUDEIL’s objectives is to rehabilitate existing community infrastructure, specifically community access roads, so that access to trading centers and markets is improved for increased agricultural production and better small business opportunities. While at the site, the delegation was able to engage in open discussion with five victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and its former spokesperson, Sam Kolo. Victims shared personal stories with the delegation, as well as how they benefited from NUDEIL, while Kolo talked about his time in the LRA and his rehabilitation back into society. NUDEIL infuses cash into the local economy with cash-for-work projects emphasizing maximum use of labor-intensive methods and local materials in construction projects. This allowed members within Patek Parish to acquire the skills necessary to complete their own community road.

NUDEIL is working to improve the quality of life for the recovering rural communities and returning internally displaced peoples to northern Uganda.

Winrock helps form first-of-their-kind electric cooperatives in Liberia

Winrock helps form first-of-their-kind electric cooperatives in Liberia.

The Liberia Energy Sector Support Program (LESSP), funded by USAID and implemented by Winrock, helped form two electric cooperatives in Liberia. These cooperatives are the first of their kind in Liberia.

The two electric cooperatives have been established by community residents to work with Winrock International and other partners, and to take on the ownership, management and sustainability of a 15 kW Micro Hydro Power Plant in Salayea District and a 35 kW Biomass Power Plant in Foya District of Lofa County.

With local ownership and control, and net profits distributed to those who use the cooperative, LESSP hopes that these cooperatives will be an ideal model for local economic development. The structure and objectives of the newly established cooperatives will encourage the management to operate the power systems sustainably to provide affordable energy for their members over the long term. In addition, cooperatives will offer a way for a group of individuals to pool their limited resources to achieve a critical mass needed to sustain electricity services. Cooperatives combine people, resources, and capital into larger, more viable and economically competitive units.

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