Trees for Global Benefits is a tree planting project in Uganda. The project started in 2003 and is run by an NGO called Ecotrust (Environmental Conservation Trust of Uganda). The project is supposed to benefit the climate by encouraging farmers in Uganda to plant trees and giving them some of the money from sales of carbon credits.
Under the project, more than 51,000 farmers have planted trees on their land. The project has issued more than 7.5 million carbon credits, certified by Plan Vivo, a UK-based carbon certification scheme.
The problem, as several academics and journalists have reported over the years, is that when the trees grow too tall and dense, it becomes difficult to grow food on the land. Some farmers have now cut down the trees to make them into charcoal.
The Trees for Global Benefits project featured on REDD-Monitor earlier this year as a case study in the series “Crooked Carbon Business” written by Simon Counsell and Jutta Kill.
In June 2026, journalist Sofie Erna Schmidt wrote an article about Trees for Global Benefits published in the Danish newspaper Politiken.
DanChurchAid
The Danish humanitarian NGO DanChurchAid (Folkekirkens Nødhjælp) has spent 8 million kroner (about US$1.2 million) to plant 280,000 trees through the Ecotrust project. DanChurchAid has made climate agreements with Danish companies. On its website DanChurchAid states that these deals “can be used to reduce both your company and your customers’ CO₂ footprint”.
One of these offsetting deals is with the football club AFG (Aarhus Gymnastikforening), which states that “compensation agreement with DanChurchAid, which ensures that emissions from our flights are matched by concrete climate measures in Uganda”.
Mattias Söderberg is DanChurchAid’s advisor on Global Climate Policy. “For us, the point itself is that it’s a development we create. It is not just about climate but about climate and development,” he tells Politiken
Farmers’ experiences with Ecotrust
In Uganda, Schmidt interviewed to 16 farmers in two districts in west Uganda. Some of them had documentation such as contracts and application forms. None of them believe that they have received the payments they are entitled to.
Schmidt met Brian Aheebwa on his small farm. He thought Ecotrust’s tree planting project would be a way to make more money. But as the trees grew, Aheebwa saw his harvests getting worse. He tells Schmidt that the soil does not have enough nutrients for both food and trees. He has now cut down most of the trees.
Another farmer, Fred Okori, has also cut down most of his trees because he has not received the payment he believes he was entitled to. “We cut the trees down because of poverty,” he tells Politiken. He built a kitchen from some of the trees he cut down from the Trees for Global Benefits project.
Okori was a volunteer coordinator for Ecotrust and helped arrange agreements with about 40 farmers in his village. “The farmers planted the trees because they also want the money,” he says. Most of these farmers had now cut down the trees. “Not only a few have cut down the trees, but most,” he tells Politiken.
A week after Politiken met him, Okori died after a long illness.
Farmers are paid six times over a 10 year period — payments are made when farmers reach requirements such as tree planting targets, survival rates, and trees measuring a certain diameter. As shown in this table from a Carbon Sale Agreement that a farmer, Evasi Tindagwesire, showed to Politiken:
In the contract, she has agreed to maintain the trees for 25 years. But payments only last 10 years. In total, after 10 years, she should receive US$74.53. That’s after the project has taken 10% of the money for the “Carbon Community Fund”.
The contract is written in English. Many farmers understand only very little English. The amounts are in US dollars not Ugandan shillings.
The contract states that Tindagwesire should plant trees on her entire plot of land. Instead, she planted trees around the edge of her plot of land. As a result Tindagwesire’s trees will absorb less CO₂ and she will receive less money.
Schmidt writes that,
Ecotrust confirms to Politiken that Evasi Tindagwesire’s trees are planted incorrectly in relation to the contract. But they compensate for the fact that someone plants differently than agreed in the contract. The organisation is planning to visit her.
John Byanuhanga is an 86-year-old who lives with his wife and his grandchildren, who also have children. He planted most of his Ecotrust trees around his home. The family has had to grow their food on another plot of land — 40 kilometres away. Byanuhanga could not find his contract with Ecotrust.
Carbon credits sold ex-ante
Ecotrust sells carbon credits are sold ex-ante — before the amount of CO₂ absorbed by the trees has been measured and verified. Politiken tried, without success, to get figures on exactly how much CO₂ the trees in Ecotrust’s Trees for Global Benefits project have absorbed. Ecotrust told Politiken that the numbers exist, but refers to the fact that the calculations are improving.
“It doesn’t seem that an actual check has been made of how much CO₂ is tied in the trees, that is, whether these credits are based on a real reality on earth,” Jens Friis Lund, professor of political ecology at the University of Copenhagen, comments to Politiken.
In 2026, the carbon credit rating agency BeZero downgraded its ranking of the Trees for Global Benefits to “BB”, Politiken reports. According to BeZero’s rating system, “BB” means a carbon credit from the project has only a “moderately low likelihood of achieving 1 tonne of CO₂e removal from the atmosphere”.
Missing auditing report
The Trees for Global Benefits project undergoes third-party verification audits every five years. That’s one of the reasons that DanChurchAid gives for working with Ecotrust.
But the most recent auditing report was completed in May 2019 and is for the period 2013 to 2017. Ecotrust’s 2024 Annual Report states that,
In accordance with the PV [Plan Vivo] Climate Standard requirements, Trees for Global Benefit undergoes third party verification every five years. ECOTRUST engaged Aster Global for the audit covering the period 2018 to 2022 and by the end of year, the desk review had been concluded.
However, the audit has still not been made available on Plan Vivo’s website.
“We are very concerned that we do not have the third-party verification yet,” DanChurchAid’s Söderberg tells Politiken. “That is something we expect to happen in the near future. We need that. We also want to know whether it is handled properly.”
DanChurchAid’s cooperation with Ecotrust continues, despite the missing audit report.
Jonathan Crook of Carbon Market Watch points out that “Climate credits issued since 2017 should not be used by a buyer to compensate for their emissions or postulate any kind of environmental benefit as they have not actually been checked by an independent third party.”
Ecotrust confirms to Politiken that the verification report has “taken longer than they expected, but it is on the way”.
Lack of clear information
Some of the farmers that Politiken speaks to have not received a copy of their contract. Others don’t know where the contract is. Half of the farmers say they signed a form that they believe is a contract. But the forms turn out to be only application forms.
Politiken speaks to Klara Fischer, a senior lecturer in environmental communication at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She has been researching tree planting projects in Uganda since 2014.
In 2024, she wrote a short article together with David Tumusiime of Makerere University based on interviews with farmers enrolled in the Trees for Global Benefits projects. The article highlights two problems with Ecotrust’s project:
Shortcomings in ensuring that tree planting does not undermine food production; and
Lack of clear information to farmers about how the project works.
Fischer tells Politiken that,
“Some of the farmers have signed the form, which leads them to believe that they are then part of the programme. It is not always clear to the farmers whether they are part of the tree planting project. And that in itself is evidence of the lack of sufficient communication between Ecotrust and the farmers.”
Fischer explains that the misunderstandings about the project is a recurring problem. “Sometimes it leads the farmers to plant the trees in ways that undermine their food production,” she says.
“Deficient” training
According to Ecotrust’s project design document, farmers “receive training and attend workshops to identify forestry activities that are suitable to their needs”. Each farmer is “trained to develop a land use/business plan, with a specific management objective”.
The project design document also claims that, “This is a cooperative community-based carbon offsetting scheme in which, through workshops, community members define activities that are technically specified by the project.”
But none of the farmers that Politiken ask had produced a “land use/business plan”. One farmer didn’t take part in any workshops because he lived too far away.
Two older farmers, who had been involved in the project since 2013, tell Politiken that the training was better when they joined the project.
They describe the current training as “deficient”.
“Ecotrust will need to provide information that ensures that the farmers do it the right way,” Fischer tells Politiken. “Otherwise, I do not think that Denmark or Sweden should invest in this project.”
Fischer visited the project in Uganda in 2024, following reporting by Staffan Lindberg in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.
Fischer did not find evidence for some of Lindberg’s reporting, such as farmers starving as a result of tree planting on their farmland. But she did find that some farmers had cut down their trees before then end of the contract.
“In my view,” she explained, “this is mainly due to two factors: firstly, the project only pays the farmers for ten years, while it is expected that the trees will stand for 25 years. Secondly, there is insufficient information about the project, which has led to some farmers joining the project without fully understanding what they needed to undertake.”
She added that,
“The lack of advice and information given to the farmers has created misunderstandings regarding payments and how long the farmers must commit to letting the trees stand. It has also been difficult for farmers to make informed decisions about planting trees is the most appropriate investment for their land. There have also been shortcomings in ensuring that tree planting does not undermine food production.”
Fischer points out that Sofie Erna Schmidt’s research in Uganda reveals similar problems to the ones she saw two years ago. “This does not indicate that there have been major changes,” she tells Politiken. “You cannot believe you can change this organisation. It’s clear from their track record that’s not going to happen.”