Keep Calm and Carry on Cooling: 7 things we love about our Cool Earth partnership

Just six months into our partnership with Cool Earth, we continue to discover more and more about the great work Hexagon is supporting.

From indigenous land rights to tree planting projects, here is a rundown of some of the fantastic work Cool Earth has recently completed or committed to, that makes us truly proud of the partnership:

1. 1. Locally led projects – through Cool Earth we are proud to be supporting 56 locally led projects in the Amazon Basin, the Congo Basin and the New Guinea rainforest. Together they protect 241,000 hectares of tropical forest that is home to 31,000 people.
   2. Championing indigenous land rights – just this year, Cool Earth has pledged two more years of funding to help four villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to obtain territorial rights over their lands and resources. At the same time, another year of funding has been confirmed for eight villages in Gabon to continue to improve forest and biodiversity conservation through restoration and the management of ancestral lands.
   3. Solving the water crisis – clean water access is vital to the health of rainforest people, reducing their dependency trips to towns or hospitals which can be costly and an extra pressure to sell land for logging. The charity’s support of a local water supply programme in Papua New Guinea (PNG) provides 2,650 people including more than 1,000 children clean drinking water and handwashing facilities.
   4. Creating the forests of the future – Cool Earth hosted the Queen’s Green Canopy project which saw no fewer than three million trees planted across the United Kingdom to create a living legacy for Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
   5. Sweet, delicious chocolate – Cool Earth has helped local communities to establish a new chocolate production centre in Urakuza in the Peruvian Amazon. The project sees 236 cacao farmers work across the charity’s Peruvian partnerships. Last year, 60,000kg of cacao was produced and sold, providing a vital income to rainforest communities.
   6. Education, training and community development – this year 63 people in PNG graduated from training for environmental awareness based on cultural exchanges between elders and young people to ensure the passing down of essential rainforest knowledge. 21 people received first aid training.
   7. Unlocking data power – Cool Earth has just committed to launching a further ten rainforest labs in Peru and PNG. In the Awajún community of Huaracayo in the northern Peruvian Amazon and in the community of Wabumari in PNG, building materials have arrived to create the lab, and hardware to begin processing data and information.

A reminder why this is important

In 2023 we all face heightened challenges. While most of us are focussed on cost of living pressures – many rainforest tribes are feeling the additional pressures of political turbulence, extreme weather, logging, narcotics trafficking and a post-Covid resumption of forest threats.

To find out more about he the work Cool Earth does to empower communities, and why they hold the key to successful conservation read our blog indigenous communities hold the key.

Discover how healthy protected rainforest can deliver 30% of the CO2 cuts we need to achieve by 2030 in our blog hope amid destruction where we explore why deforestation creates a multiplier effect of damage.

If you’re interested in supporting Cool Earth please donate here.