Partner: PROLEÑA

Eco-stoves built (2000-2011): 11,638

Trees Planted (2000-2011): 3,282,389

There are over 7,000 small businesses dedicated to the informal food industry in the three major urban centers of Nicaragua. These businesses are mainly small, women-owned, home-based operations that sell local fare such as tortillas, nacatamales, or soup. They operate on small profit margins and their largest expense is buying fuelwood. 

These businesses consume an average of 12 tons of fuelwood a year in their inefficient, traditional stoves, contributing to small profit margins and to deforestation.

Deforestation due to domestic and commercial wood consumption is compounded by the fact that Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America. Our reforestation programs are focused on shrinking deforestation rates along the Pacific coastal region, where the majority of Nicaragua’s population lives.

Forest Replacement Association Programs began in 2000 with TWP partner Proleña to establish a plantation system that provides heavy industry and medium/small scale businesses with a sustainable firewood source not derived from native forest. The FRA system is a challenging composite of players with many changing variables that in Nicaragua make it difficult to achieve. However, there has been much activity happening with FRA members, plantations planted and harvested, and in 2011 TWP/Proleña will be hiring a third party verifier to report on a decade of FRA work.