The Guayabi (Patagonula americana) is a typically South American timber tree. Its trunk diameter is about 70 to 80 centimeters and it reaches a height of 10 to 25 meters. The smaller parasite in the foreground is a Higuera (Ficus benjamina), a weeping fig.
Published on 22/02/2021
At night, in the woods near Puerto Lopez, in the heart of Colombia, when the parrots stop screeching, the pumas hunt silently in the undergrowth and the monkeys take a nap in the lush crowns above, you can hear the breath and heartbeat of the trees.
You can place a stethoscope on the stem of a young tanimbuca, a guanandi tree, a fragrant eucalyptus or a pine tree and you can hear how they pump water from the roots into the branches, the treetops, the leaves and exhale it, sprinkling the whole forest with a fine mist in the morning.
Millions of newly planted trees in Colombia, Argentina, Mali and China pulse to this same rhythm. All of them contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the Novartis global industrial and commercial operations.
The idea to plant massive forests dates back to the early years of the Millennium, when Novartis joined the United Nations Global Compact, an international initiative designed to spur corporate efforts to increase environmental protection and social responsibility.
Amid a series of measures to manage its carbon footprint, the company also decided to invest in carbon sinks and develop its own large forestry projects around the world in which it has since planted some 15 million trees. These have helped Novartis offset around 6 percent of the carbon emissions from its operations each year over the last 10years.
Natural and financial viability
The man steering the massive efforts over this period was Markus Lehni, who joined Novartis in 2005 as Group Global Head Environment and Energy.
He and his team did not simply want to grow carbon sinks. Their goal was to design and develop forestry projects that were in line with the best environmental and social practices, while at the same time advancing forestry ventures that are economically sustainable over the long term.
“Our goal was to create projects that would help us reduce our carbon footprint, while at the same time improving the environmental value of the sites, giving local communities the possibility to benefit from these forests and make the projects financially viable,” Lehni said. “This was, however, far from easy. Looking back over the past years, we have made good progress, but also had a lot of lessons learned, especially regarding the financial sustainability of our ventures.”
Tumbling timber
A steep learning curve came with the first and to date most mature project, which was launched in 2006 and centered on the 3400-hectare estate of Santo Domingo in the subtropical northeast of Argentina.
Working together with the local forestry operator Grupo Manejo Forestal, Lehni’s team and local counterparts steered the plantation of thousands of pine trees, yellow jacarandas and Australian silver oaks, among more than a dozen of native tree species from local natural forests.
Besides helping sequester the bulk of the CO2 output produced by Novartis so far, the farm, which today employs 20 people, is already selling timber from selective thinning and considers harvesting pine resin in future to sustain itself economically. The diverse forest stands also allow a variety of mammals such as big game, pumas and capybaras as well as many reptiles and birds to find a new habitat, connecting native forest islands with equally attractive passageways.
But while the Santo Domingo forest has made a substantial contribution to the efforts of Novartis to balance its greenhouse gas emissions, the project so far was unable to live up to its long-term financial goals, mainly because of Argentina’s current difficult economic situation.
“The price of timber is currently at rock bottom,” Lehni explained. “Harvesting costs as much as the timber brings in income. However, despite the currently adverse market environment, we are confident that Santo Domingo will be able to better balance its accounts in the foreseeable future and continue to further grow its carbon stock with a diverse and rich forest environment.”
Jeopardizing Jatropha
Lehni’s team also encountered challenges in Mali, where they launched an agroforestry project to cultivate Jatropha trees in 2007.
While the initial idea was to sequester CO2 with these robust bushes, the team also envisaged that the oily Jatropha fruits can be collected and used for the production of biofuel, soap and bio-fertilizer, providing an additional income to the rural smallholder communities owning the bushes.
However, pure Jatropha plantations failed to live up to the high expectations because the plant is difficult to cultivate in arid conditions, Lehni explained. Its need of sufficient water to survive and grow and its erratic yields jeopardized the project.
“After we ran into challenges with Jatropha, the local partners broadened the scope of the project, included edible crops and other fruit trees, including cashew trees,” Lehni said.
The 10- to 12-meter-high cashew trees are relatively undemanding and have been around in Africa since the 16th century, when the Portuguese imported it from Brazil. “The share of West African cashew nuts on the world market is the third-largest after Vietnam and India,” Lehni clarified, “so we recently switched from pure Jatropha to a mixed plantation with cashew and food crops. Jatropha now, as in the past, is being used as an erosion shield.”
Thanks to this U-turn, the project, which directly employs some 40 staff in rural Mali, not only helps absorb CO2, but is also set to provide additional income to thousands of smallholders, who will be able to sell both cashews and Jatropha nuts in the future.
