Abstract

Many international organizations support agroforestry projects globally. These organizations face potential conflicts between securing community benefits via their agroforestry projects and participating in carbon credit markets; I investigate how these groups balance these two sets of priorities. I interviewed 10 organizations and reviewed 48 organizations’ websites to understand how they address conflicts between carbon credits and agroforestry. Organizations outwardly assert that carbon credits and agroforestry are compatible, but discuss three primary tensions between the two: permanence, issues of agroforestry project complexity, and resource limitations. I find that some agroforestry intermediary organizations address these competing goals in interviews and on their websites, but robust discussion of these tensions is sparse. I conclude that while these two goals may be compatible in certain situations, these tensions must be acknowledged and addressed and projects must be designed thoughtfully to achieve both to an optimal extent. Further, organizations may stand to benefit from robust, public-facing discussion of these tensions.