Offset Portfolio: Katingan Peatlands

About Pachama

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Project Location: Indonesia

Offset Type: Avoided Deforestation

Duration: 30 years

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This project in Indonesia’s carbon-rich peatlands turned a planned palm oil plantation into an Orangutan refuge. Tropical peat swamps can store 20x more carbon than forests, making them a critical priority to protect from deforestation. 

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The support from the Commons community helps ensure the carbon stored in these peatlands remains, while creating alternative livelihoods and improving health and education for local communities. Your support also enables monitoring of both carbon and biodiversity. 

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Why Forestry?

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Trees inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. They store carbon in their mass as they grow - one of nature’s natural carbon removal storage technologies.

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Recent research shows global forests store about 30% of all annual human CO₂ emissions. Project Drawdown estimates that forest restoration and protection can store up to 122 gigatons more carbon over the next 30 years. 

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Read our Forestry 101 Primer →

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Carbon Offset Evaluation

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Forests have enormous potential for capturing and storing carbon, but it’s difficult to verify and enforce forestry projects, and to ensure your dollars are actually causing them to happen.

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We chose the Katingan Peatlands project because it was unlikely to occur without carbon finance and delivers strong benefits to nearby communities and ecosystems. 

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Forests provide critical livelihoods for communities that live around them, so investing in community benefits helps reduce the need for deforestation. We select projects that use input from communities  to prioritize the benefits provided, creating tangible benefits like jobs, income, healthcare, and education. 

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This project employs nearly 200 full-time staff members, 74% of which are local community members. It also provides loans for sustainable revenue streams that don’t depend on the forest. The project also has improved healthcare and expanded education in the 34 nearby villages, including for hundreds of women. 

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Beyond Carbon, Forests are rich hotspots for biodiversity. This project creates a buffer along the Tanjung Puting National Park’s eastern border, offering sanctuary to hundreds of species. It also helps monitor key species, including orangutans.

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Together our community is protecting critical biodiversity, while keeping carbon locked in forests. 

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Read Borneo Peatlands’ project documentation →‍

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Commons' Community Impact

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The Commons community has supported Pachama projects since 2020, including in Peru, Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia.

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Our demand for new projects, alongside that of other buyers, has resulted in both projects selling out of their carbon credit supply. As a result, the owners are able to command higher prices for their carbon credits in the next vintage (in some cases, as much as 33-50% higher), moving closer to true costs of carbon.

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As the Commons community grows, we’re also able to have a stronger voice as a buyer in requesting more evidence of community engagement and benefits from these projects on an ongoing basis.

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Commons Offset Portfolio

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Supporting carbon offsets can be a powerful way to invest in green technologies and protect natural ecosystems. But they aren’t a silver bullet – each project has a unique set of risks.

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With the Commons Offset Portfolio, we do the work to maximize your impact. Just as you wouldn’t put all your money into one stock – we don’t put all your dollars into a single offset project.

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Read more about the Commons Offset Portfolio →

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