Timor-Leste

The Program directly benefits smallholder farming families and coffee producers, particularly underserved rural households across seven municipalities. By strengthening governance, improving livelihoods, and promoting sustainable land management, it reduces deforestation pressures and enhances local resilience.

Key Community Benefits:

• Sustainable Agroforestry Systems: Rehabilitation and expansion of shade-grown coffee systems that increase yields, restore soil health, and enhance long-term productivity

• Income Diversification: Development of alternative income sources through value-chain support, improved processing, certification, and access to premium markets

• Community-Based Forest Protection: Strengthening of local forest governance through conservation agreements, participatory management, and sustainable use practices

• Alternative Fuelwood and Energy Efficiency: Establishment of community woodlots and distribution of efficient cookstoves to reduce forest pressure and household fuel costs

• Capacity Building and Inclusion: Training for farmers, cooperatives, and local leaders in agroforestry, forest management, and business practices, emphasizing gender equity and youth participation

These efforts connect forest protection with livelihood improvement, empowering communities to adopt sustainable practices, restore degraded land, and build climate-smart, resilient rural economies across Timor-Leste’s coffee landscapes.

The Program protects and restores key habitats across the Wallacea Biodiversity Hotspot, home to over 560 threatened species, including 10 endemics unique to the Timor and Wetar Deciduous Forests.

Key Biodiversity Benefits

• Habitat Conservation: Protection of forests and riparian corridors that sustain endemic and endangered species such as the Timor sparrow, olive-headed lorikeet, and yellow-crested cockatoo

• Reforestation and Habitat Connectivity: Restoration of degraded lands and coffee agroforestry systems that reconnect fragmented forests and improve wildlife mobility

• Watershed and Soil Protection: Reforestation and mixed-species planting to reduce erosion, stabilize slopes, and protect critical water sources

• Ecosystem Resilience: Enhanced adaptive capacity of ecosystems and communities to climate change through sustainable land and forest management

Together, these interventions conserve biodiversity, protect ecosystem services, and promote landscape-scale ecological restoration across western Timor-Leste.

Led by the Government of Timor-Leste and Terra Global Capital, the Program brings together public and technical partners to advance forest protection, sustainable land management, and climate finance.

• Government: The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Forestry, and Fisheries (MALFF) oversees program implementation, policy alignment, and coordination with the National Designated Authority (NDA) to ensure national climate priorities are met

• Terra Global: Provides technical expertise in greenhouse gas quantification, monitoring, reporting, and verification for carbon asset development under market standards. Terra structures and provides climate finance, supports ongoing program management, and commercializes verified emission reductions/removals