Project Update: NICFEC Now the Tierra Verde Climate Change Adaptation Center!

by Gemara Gifford, International Director

Since our last update in June, we have been very busy working on the Nicaraguan Center for Forests, Energy & Climate (NICFEC) with our partners at PROLEÑA. Not only have we been working on the buildings, but a new name as well! The Nicaraguan Center for Forests, Energy & Climate will now be the Tierra Verde Climate Change Adaptation Center. Set in one of the driest and most threatened ecosystems on earth, the Pacific Dry Corridor, the Tierra Verde Center is a new regional climate change training facility where diverse stakeholders share knowledge, skills, and strategies in sustainable agriculture, forestry, fuel-efficient technologies, watershed management, soil remediation, and more. Over the last four months, we have nearly completed the dormitory where people from all across the world will be able to be housed to share knowledge on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The dormitory for the Tierra Verde Center is nearly complete. It will house visitors while they learn about climate adaptation in Central America.

We have also recently established two tree nurseries at the back of the site, which will soon house 50,000-100,000 native trees for use in reforestation, agroforestry, and fuel-lot projects. Like everything on site, the nurseries will serve as a demonstration. Farmers will be able to see, feel, and touch a tree nursery planted with species that can survive well in the arid climate, as well as learn how to market the products grown from the trees, i.e., fuelwood, poles for construction, fruits and nuts.

These seedlings growing in the Tierra Verde Center tree nursery will be used for demonstrations.

Perhaps the most exciting achievement was that we hosted our first event at the Tierra Verde Center site since we began construction! While we wish it were under different circumstances, we were able to hold a tree planting ceremony in honor of our dear friend, Lucas Wolf, with a majestic Ceiba tree in his honor. Over 30 people were in attendance from all across the country, many locals and colleagues whom Lucas built relationships with over the past three years in Nicaragua. Lucas was TWP’s International Director, and a dear friend, who passed away suddenly this July while traveling in Cuba.

In honor of Lucas’ birthday, we held a tree planting ceremony at the new the Tierra Verde Center site.

Upon completion in 2018, the Tierra Verde Center will feature live classrooms, workspaces, demonstration gardens, and private cabanas where local and international visitors — from smallholder farmer to high-level decision-maker — can both learn about and participate in climate change adaptation education in the Pacific Dry Corridor. On display will be a variety of demonstrative solutions including clean cookstove designs, fuel-efficient kilns and ovens, solar energy systems, green charcoal technologies, and agroforestry plots that reveal relevant strategies for climate change resilience, especially for local smallholder farmers. We expect to launch programming and tours in 2018!

If you are interested in traveling to Nicaragua with us, or any of our program countries, please sign up for our email list for upcoming trips.

An International Tree-bute to Lucas Wolf

by Sebastian Africano, Executive Director

August 28, 2017
Managua, Nicaragua

If you haven’t experienced Trees, Water & People’s (TWP) work first-hand, it’s difficult to explain the importance of having someone like Lucas Wolf leading your efforts in the field. TWP’s success depends less on what we bring to the communities in which we work, and more on how relationships are created and cultivated, and how promises are made and kept. Lucas was incredibly talented at building trust and empathy with people across borders, cultures, and walks of life — a trait that made him excellent and irreplaceable in his work.

Over the past week, I’ve had the honor of taking Lucas back to some of the people and places he loved most in Central America. Lucas is missed not only because he helped bring clean cookstoves, solar lighting, rainwater catchment systems, and tree nurseries to the region, but for the genuine connections he made with people during the years he spent here.

Lucas’ friends Norma and Pedro dedicate a tree nursery to Lucas and TWP in La Tigra, Honduras.

In Honduras, we commemorated our love for Lucas by planting walnut and citrus seedlings with his ashes and scattering some into an ancient volcanic crater that fascinated him. In the community of La Tigra, his friends Norma and Pedro surprised us with a sign dedicating a tree nursery to Lucas and TWP, complete with a hand-painted wolf by his name. At the Center for Education in Sustainable Agriculture (CEASO), where he was like an adopted son, we held a prayer service and planted a walnut tree with his ashes in the center of their campus.

The Center for Education in Sustainable Agriculture (CEASO) plants a walnut tree with Lucas’ ashes in the center of their campus.

I then traveled to Nicaragua to celebrate his birthday with his loved ones in Managua and sent portions of his ashes home with friends from various corners of the country. Friends in Cuba honored him by planting a seedling for him near Cienfuegos, and by burying some of his ashes under a Cuban Palm in the National Botanical Garden in Havana. His friends in the U.S. spread his ashes along the High Line in New York City, a place he loved to jog while living on the East Coast.

Friends in southern Cuba plant a tree for Lucas.

Today, we continue to celebrate Lucas by planting a Ceiba tree (his favorite) in his name at the Nicaraguan Center for Forests, Energy & Climate, and a Crabapple tree outside of the Trees, Water & People office in Fort Collins, CO. Next month, we’ll continue the tributes in Guatemala and El Salvador, ensuring that his remains regenerate life in as many places as possible.

What more can I say — Lucas touched people’s hearts across the planet in a way only he could. It’s an honor to take him back to the people and places he held dear. Lucas always insisted on smiling through life’s challenges and spreading as much sunshine as possible in our short time here on earth. We can only hope that spreading his ashes under trees throughout the hemisphere will serve as a daily reminder to us all to Live Life Like Lucas.

If you would like to stay up to date with our efforts to honor Lucas’ memory, please sign up for our email list. 

Project Update: NICFEC Dorms Underway

By Lucas Wolf, International Director

June marks the gentle start of summer in the northern hemisphere, but in the more southern latitudes, particularly in Central America, June brings brutal summer heat. Despite that heat, construction workers are toiling, sweating, and laboring on the dormitory — our first major construction project on the site of the Nicaragua Center for Forests, Energy, and Climate (NICFEC).

In addition to the dormitory, a trench and pipeline are under construction from its base to a biofilter tank near the edge of the property. This biofilter, or residual water treatment system, will process and treat graywater from the dormitory and other buildings so that we can recycle the water for our agroforestry nursery, and clonal tree garden. Two thousand bricks have already arrived on site to construct the walls of the main building, with another 4,000 set to come later. The full dormitory project is on time and within budget and should be completed before the contractual deadline (and the arrival of the rains!).

Construction site for the future Nicaragua Center for Forests, Energy, and Climate (NICFEC). 

Recently, we visited the NICFEC site with friends from the women’s cooperative, Artists for Soup, based out of La Paz Centro. This dynamic group has received training from our friends at BioNica and the Asociación para el Desarrollo Agroecológico Regional (ADAR) in the arts of biointensive smallholder agriculture, designed to increase food sovereignty and nutritional values in underserved communities. Elioena Arauz, the women’s cooperative leader, and her team will soon dig and plant 12 biointensive beds on the NICFEC site and contribute to our goals of sustainability, food sovereignty, women’s empowerment, and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Construction of the new NICFEC dormitory is currently underway.

At the end of May, our first organized tour of NICFEC and its surroundings will take place with a special group of Trees, Water & People donors, board members, staff, and a few new TWP friends. This group will get a behind-the-scenes look at our progress to date and meet with Proleña board members, architects, and construction specialists shaping the NICFEC vision. Upon the conclusion of this trip, we will move forward with agroforestry and landscaping plans as well as the development of our clonal tree garden.

We would love our supporters to take a trip with us to Nicaragua and visit NICFEC upon its completion. Please stay tuned for future travel opportunities by signing up for our email list!