As part of our Social and Sustainability Promise, we're sponsoring a special project in the Amazon rainforest that’s helping to provide a solution to climate change.
The Pacajai Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation project (Pacajai REDD+) is supporting the interests of Amazonian people and is helping to protect the rainforest too.
We’ve all heard about the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, but did you know we’ve already lost 50% of what we once had? And we’re currently losing it at the rate of a football pitch size area every second due to deforestation.
Deforestation is the world’s number one cause of species extinction, so help is needed to find other ways to support local people and the natural environment too. The Pacajai project has created a private conservation reserve where the forest will be protected. This is so important because the Amazon’s natural environment is home to 10% of the world’s creatures.
Our social volunteering event organiser, Jackie Firth, was searching for a partner who could provide over 330 native British trees for a tree planting initiative we’re planning in the UK. The Wave Woodland project will plant a tree for every employee of Wave and is an additional commitment towards our Social and Sustainability Promise. Through our research, we learned that Carbon Footprint could help us with our tree planting scheme, and we also learned about the work they do to support several carbon-capture projects around the world.
Carbon capture is very important of course but saving the huge diversity of life in the Amazon rainforest itself is something really special.
Jane Austin, Director of HR at Wave explains: “We’re very aware of climate change and the impact it’s having on our planet, so when the opportunity to support the Pacajai project was presented by Jackie, it didn’t take our steering group long to decide we wanted to help and are delighted we could do this.”
“The project is enhancing the lives of local people who live in the rainforest. It is offering them opportunities to work with the forest that will improve their livelihoods, providing them with a better way of life by protecting the trees, the natural environment and the diversity of species that need it to survive. This project will help them create a better standard of living from other income sources.”
Click here to see our Carbon Footprint certificate.
