BPP Partnership Impact Series: Upland agroforestry for incomes and carbon sequestration in Vietnam
Since its launch, the Business Partnerships Platform (BPP) has worked with ambitious partners to deliver meaningful, lasting change in communities across the world. The BPP Partnership Impact Series celebrates the outcomes and lessons from our partnerships, highlighting their contributions to inclusive economic growth, resilience and sustainable development.
Our Carbon Markets partnerships in Vietnam were launched to promote the growth of sustainable carbon markets that deliver significant social and environmental benefits to communities in Vietnam. This partnership, which concluded in June 2025, showed how smallholder farmers in Son La can use agroforestry to restore upland landscapes, boost incomes and access carbon markets.
Transforming upland fields into thriving forests
On the steep hillsides of Son La province, maize and cassava have long been the mainstay for smallholder farmers. But these crops are labour-intensive, prone to erosion and offer few long-term rewards. A BPP partnership set out to change this, helping farmers move away from coffee and maize monocultures through intercropping timber and multipurpose trees that restore landscapes, diversify incomes and generate verified carbon.
From 2022 to 2025, the partnership worked with 492 farming households, mostly from ethnic-minority communities in Son La, to plant 140,000 timber and multipurpose trees across upland fields and coffee farms. The trees’ survival rates of 85% to 90% show the approach is technically strong and well-adapted to local conditions.
The model hopes to link farmers with Rabobank’s ACORN program. In Vietnam smallholder agroforestry projects will be aggregated in order to sell verified carbon removals on the international market. Under this system, 70% of carbon revenues flow back to farmers, providing them with a reliable new income stream alongside the sale of fruit and resins from multipurpose trees and long-term timber harvests projected to generate around US$10 to 12 million over 20 years.
Digital tools were critical to making this possible. A new mobile and web platform now allows farmers to geo-tag and track their trees, reducing verification costs and strengthening confidence in the carbon credit system. Together, these innovations have supported the development of one of Vietnam’s first agroforestry carbon projects aligned with international standards, which is now close to registration through ACORN, which has a guaranteed minimum carbon price of €20 per tonne.
About the partnership
The partnership brought together Greenfield Consulting & Development (GFD), the Forest Science Centre of Northwest Vietnam (FSCN), the University of Queensland, ACOM, Son La Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Co Noi Agroforestry Cooperative and the Australian Government to establish one of Vietnam’s first smallholder-led agroforestry carbon projects.
The partnership set out to support up to 800 farming households to plant 100,000 scattered timber and multi-purpose trees on sloping land in Son La, helping them generate income from timber, fruit and carbon credits. By the time it closed in June 2025, it had enabled 492 households to establish 140,000 trees across upland and coffee plots, exceeding the planting target.
Alongside planting, farmers and government staff took part in extensive training, including 12 farmer courses and multiple extension sessions during coffee farmer group meetings, reaching 500 households and five specialist programs for more than 80 provincial and national officials. The team also pioneered Vietnam’s first smallholder-focused agroforestry carbon app, enabling farmers to map and monitor their trees at low cost while strengthening transparency for carbon markets. At the policy level, a national seminar and technical review analysed Vietnam’s current carbon frameworks in line with international standards, helping inform the country’s forestry carbon standard.
By the time the partnership closed in 2025, it had delivered practical results in the field as well as built the systems needed for scale. Farmers are now equipped with new skills, digital tools and secure market access, laying the foundations for upland agroforestry to deliver lasting benefits for livelihoods, landscapes and the climate.
Highlights
During the BPP partnership period, highlights included:
- Tree planting at scale: 140,000 timber and multi-purpose trees planted across upland and coffee plots, surpassing the original 100,000-tree target.
- Farmer engagement: 492 households supported to diversify livelihoods through timber, fruit, resin and carbon income streams.
- Climate change contribution: Projected total carbon sequestration of 80,000-100,000 tCO₂e over 20 years, including both above-ground biomass and soil carbon improvements.
- Capacity building: 12 training courses for 500 farming households, plus 5 specialist trainings for more than 80 provincial and national staff.
- Digital innovation: Launch of Vietnam’s first smallholder-focused agroforestry carbon app, enabling geo-tagging and monitoring of trees.
- Policy alignment: A national seminar and technical carbon standards review informed Vietnam’s forestry carbon standard, embedding lessons into national frameworks.
- Market access supported: Project has been supported to join Rabobank’s ACORN program. Once registered, this program guarantees a minimum carbon price of €20/tCO₂e and ensure that 70% of carbon revenues flow directly to local communities.
View the full partnership impact story below or download here.
