Supporting a Local Environmental Collective to Grow Social and Environmental Impact
How a Tree-Planting Initiative Empowers Neighborhood and Plants Roots for Long-Term Change
Recently, IMPT! committed to become net zero by 2030 and started to look for better ways to offset our carbon footprint as a small business. The SME Climate Hub was a key resource to help us consider the options and access the rich content.
But as we considered ways to reduce our company’s environmental impact, we also wanted to find a strategy that connects with our emphasis on local community impact. That made us think of Olaria Verde and its urban reforestation and gardening project in our Rio de Janeiro neighborhood known as Olaria.
Like most of the neighborhoods in the Rio outskirts, Olaria is very gray because there are fewer trees. This affects the weather, the beauty, and the real estate values in areas of the neighborhood. The environmentalist collective Olaria Verde started in 2019 intending to make the neighborhood more colorful and green by planting more trees. After growing frustrated by the absence of public leadership in the region, young residents Victor Vianna and Daniel Gustavo founded the collective. Their movement to green the area by planting more trees attracted new helpers and supporters. The project is making a difference in the neighborhood and affecting the life quality of the residents. Now in its fourth year, the collective has independently planted more than 300 native trees. What makes the project unique is its origins — planting trees to make a Olaria a better place to live rather than having climate change as its primary concern.
It resonated with our experience in launching our company. IMPT! began with a focus on positive social impact, although we soon realized that most of our company decisions were also connected to reducing harmful environmental impact. This reflects the fact that people in our local community, especially on the outskirts of Rio, are more concerned about the huge social justice issues we face. So the focus of solutions is social justice.
Projects like Olaria Verde can make a double impact by building awareness that social justice and the climate crisis are interconnected and inspiring more people to be concerned about the environment.
Olaria Verde affected us as founders of IMPT! because it is so connected to our values. That inspired us to figure out how to structure a partnership that affects our local community directly and helps us to step into offsetting carbon emissions with them. As a company we would rather build a partnership connected with our roots of local impact than pay for carbon credits that support projects at a distance. Planting and maintaining trees in Olaria seems a perfect match.
Our initial idea was to make some seedling donations to the project, but the main current need was essential materials and inputs for maintenance of the trees already planted in the region. So we made our donation. And we are already working with the founders of Olaria Verde to build something together in the long term.
After the conversation and doing some research, we are matching efforts to bring Olaria Verde to the next step and enhance its impact. We realized that an urban reforestation action is more expensive than a more common reforestation project in forest areas because of a variety of factors including soil quality and tree maintenance.
The positive social impacts are big and immediate. Because of this, we are in the process of understanding how the project could adjust the carbon credit principles and further provide carbon credit for businesses locally and worldwide. This will make feasible the full urban reforestation of the Olaria neighborhood and surrounding areas, which is a goal for us.
Recently I connected with Daniel Gustavo of the Olaria Verde project to learn more about the work, background, and importance of the local environmentalist collective. Here’s what he had to share about the project:
What are the main fronts of the work of the environmentalist collective Olaria Verde today?
Daniel Gustavo: The Olaria Verde Environmentalist Collective operates on three pillars: Planting, Environmental Education, and Activism.
How does the planting of seedlings in Olaria work? Are the seedlings from volunteer donations?
Gustavo: Planting and maintenance are carried out by volunteers from the Olaria neighborhood who organize themselves to spend at least part of the day working together. We have an average of 30 volunteers, ranging in age from 10 to 80, and people of all ethnicities, creeds, sexualities, and political views. The group tries to focus on a common ideal to strengthen itself with each action and generate a positive impact on the native fauna and flora of the neighborhood. The work parties take place monthly and on Sunday mornings, and after the action, a get-together is held in a bar near the planted area.
The collective has members from a wide range of academic backgrounds, which enriches the debate between members and provides new solutions to the obstacles we encounter during our actions. In addition, the collective has the Technical Chamber of the Carioca Environment as a parameter, which created the PDAU (a manual of planting techniques made by the technical staff of the Parks and Gardens Foundation). Therefore, the collective has the will to plant and knows how to plant well. Considering all the indications, the planting is done in the best possible technical way.
The seedlings we use for planting are acquired in various ways. We have members of the collective who are in charge of creating new seedlings. We also receive donations of seedlings from local residents. But we have bought the majority of seedlings from partner gardens in the region. In this way, in the five years of the collective’s life, we have already managed to plant around 350 seedlings of native species. We also carry out the maintenance on trees already planted by others.
The collective has had a positive impact, attracting government bodies such as the Parks and Gardens Foundation, the Department of the Environment, and others to enter into partnerships. In our partnership with the foundation, we have been able to plant together, with the seedlings coming from environmental compensation processes. This has made larger-scale plantings possible.
In this way, it’s clear to see how the mobilization of civil society has had repercussions on several fronts: the environment, the residents, environmental education, and encouraging government bodies to carry out their duties. Volunteering, as an ideal, is a viable way of bringing about real, positive change in a given region.
The environmentalist collective started from dissatisfaction with local government leadership. How does the relationship with the local government bodies work? What are the main demands?
Gustavo: The Olaria Verde Collective was born out of the absence of public authorities in the Olaria neighborhood. Victor Vianna, the creator of the collective, gathered friends so that he could fund the collective and start working in the area. After years of hard work, the collective has managed to create a culture of reconnection between residents and their region, generating a sense of identity and caring for the environment.
The government agencies noticed this repercussion. Seeing that this mobilization highlighted the precariousness and absence of public power, they sought a partnership to join forces with civil society to improve their image. The collective, as mentioned before, also works in the field of activism, and at this point, the needs and conditions for this partnership to happen were put on the agenda. At a meeting between members of the Olaria Verde Collective and the Parques e Jardins Foundation, common points and constructive criticism were aligned, and the partnership was set up in accordance with the conditions set by the collective.
In this way, the relationship with the foundation is friendly but demanding. Considering the collective’s independence, the moment the foundation is absent, we will return with actions independently. The environment can’t wait for bureaucracy and the political will of Rio de Janeiro’s rulers; our fight is now.
Concerning other bodies such as COMLURB (Municipal Urban Cleaning Company), SMAC (Municipal Department of the Environment), and SBAU (Brazilian Society of Urban Arborization), the relationship is healthy and one of dialog, meeting the demands presented by the collective efficiently, even though we have not entered into a direct partnership. The main demands including providing quality pruning, clearing dead trees, rebuilding collars, and donating small saplings for distribution at events we organize.
What are the main needs and challenges of Olaria Verde today?
Gustavo: The collective needs inputs for maintenance and planting such as substrate, large bamboo poles, hydrogel, and fertilized soil. The collective’s main operational challenge is enriching the soil. As the roads become more and more cemented, the soil becomes poorer in nutrients and consequently the planted tree takes a long time to grow or even dies. In the logistics sphere, the biggest challenge is fundraising. The collective has reached a level where it can debate head-on with government bodies. So the political part is a question of finding the best way to receive support.
What is the vision or the plan for the future of Olaria Verde?
Gustavo: The environmental collective Olaria Verde has been debating among its members about founding a civil society organization (CSO) and generating a CNPJ (National Registry of Legal Entities) to be able to enter into large-scale partnerships with companies that aim to help the third sector. In addition, the collective is in the process of submitting applications to institutions that promote carbon credit and carbon neutrality. We are also in the process of drawing up Environmental Education dynamics aimed at supporting the upcoming G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro, with an emphasis on environmental and climate sustainability.
These measures are ways of improving the collective in its actions and even amplifying the proposal to neighboring neighborhoods, which can reverberate in other regions as a reference in the fight for the environment. Putting the three pillars of support into play once again: Planting, Environmental Education, and Activism.
B The Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.
