Proposed Pilot Location — Kaua’i, Hawai’i

The IMUA Tropical Ecosystem Restoration & Carbon Drawdown Pilot is a proposed 10-acre restoration initiative on the island of Kaua‘i, Hawai‘i.

The project seeks to transition underutilized pasture or degraded agricultural land into a multi-strata perennial agroecological system designed to support soil regeneration, biodiversity recovery, and long-term carbon sequestration.

By establishing a carefully monitored pilot site, the initiative aims to document how tropical restoration systems can increase soil organic carbon, rebuild ecological function and long-term ecosystem resilience, and demonstrate regenerative land stewardship models suited to island ecosystems.

While many restoration efforts focus on large-scale forestry projects, there remains limited field evidence demonstrating how high-density perennial agroforestry systems can restore degraded tropical landscapes while simultaneously rebuilding soil carbon, increasing vegetation biomass, and supporting resilient food systems.  By integrating syntropic agroforestry design with transparent carbon monitoring from the earliest stages of ecosystem restoration, the pilot explores an approach that remains relatively under-documented in tropical island environments.

The pilot integrates several complementary approaches, including:

• ecosystem restoration

• agroforestry system design

• soil and vegetation carbon monitoring

• biodiversity recovery

• regenerative perennial food production

An important objective of the pilot is to generate field-based evidence and practical restoration frameworks that can support land stewards and restoration practitioners working across tropical, subtropical, and island environments.  Over time, the initiative also aims to help inform restoration approaches that support carbon drawdown, ecosystem recovery, and regenerative land stewardship across other landscapes facing similar ecological and climate challenges around the world.

Island landscapes like Kaua‘i offer a unique opportunity to demonstrate how land restoration, watershed health, and climate resilience are deeply interconnected.

Often referred to as the Garden Isle, Kaua‘i contains some of the most biologically rich and climatically diverse landscapes in the Pacific.  At the same time, the island reflects many of the land-use challenges found across tropical and subtropical regions.  Over the past century, large portions of the island were converted to plantation agriculture and pasture systems.  Many of these lands now remain in low-biomass grassland states, vulnerable to erosion, soil degradation, fires, and declining ecological function.

Restoring perennial vegetation and rebuilding soil health in these landscapes not only strengthens ecological function, but also increases the land’s capacity to store carbon in vegetation and soil.  In island ecosystems such as Hawai‘i, land, water, and ocean systems are closely connected.  Soil erosion and runoff from degraded land can affect rivers, coastal waters, and coral reef systems downstream.  Rebuilding soil structure and establishing perennial vegetation can strengthen watershed resilience while helping reduce sediment loss to the ocean. 

Kaua‘i is also one of the most ecologically dynamic islands on Earth.  Dramatic rainfall gradients, volcanic soils, and elevation changes create a mosaic of microclimates across relatively small areas of land.  This diversity provides a meaningful setting to observe how regenerative agroforestry systems respond to different ecological conditions within a single landscape.

Launching a restoration pilot on Kaua’i also offers the advantage of operating within a transparent regulatory and scientific environment, with access to research institutions, ecological monitoring expertise, and established stewardship networks.  

While the pilot is rooted in Kaua‘i, its intention is broader.  Many tropical, subtropical, and island landscapes around the world face similar challenges: degraded agricultural land, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and increasing climate vulnerability.  Demonstrating restoration approaches in a scientifically supported and highly visible setting like Hawai‘i can help generate insights relevant to land stewards and restoration practitioners working across similar landscapes globally.

The IMUA pilot is intentionally designed to be a 10-acre restoration site on Kaua‘i.  

At this scale, the landscape is large enough to support ecological diversity while still allowing careful observation of how restoration unfolds over time, including how vegetation, soil health, and soil carbon develop as degraded land restores and transitions into a carbon-storing ecosystem.

Within a 10-acre landscape it becomes possible to:

• observe how restoration systems respond across different microclimates

• experiment with varied planting densities and species compositions

• monitor changes in soil carbon and vegetation growth over time

• document restoration practices as the ecosystem develops

Rather than attempting to transform large landscapes immediately, the project begins with a focused pilot site where restoration can be carefully stewarded and learned from.

The intention is to develop a restoration approach that is both ecologically grounded and practically replicable across other tropical, subtropical, and island landscapes.

The IMUA pilot is intended not only as a restoration site, but as a place for learning and sharing what becomes possible when degraded land is thoughtfully restored.

Across many tropical regions of the world, landscapes face similar challenges:

• degraded pasture or former plantation land

• declining soil health

• reduced biodiversity

• vulnerable local food systems

• increasing climate pressures

By carefully documenting restoration practices, ecological changes, and soil carbon development, the Kaua‘i pilot can help illuminate approaches that may be useful for other land stewards working in similar environments.

While every landscape is unique, many island and coastal regions across the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean basins face similar patterns of degraded agricultural land, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and increasing climate pressures.

The lessons emerging from this work may help inform future restoration efforts across:

• Pacific and other island ecosystems

• Tropical and subtropical agricultural landscapes

• Coastal watershed regions

• Regenerative agroforestry initiatives

The intention is not to create a single blueprint, but to contribute practical insight into how degraded tropical and subtropical land can be restored into diverse, living ecosystems over time, supporting soil regeneration, biodiversity recovery, long-term carbon storage, and more resilient pathways toward regenerative food systems and local food sovereignty.

While the pilot is designed to explore climate and carbon outcomes, its purpose reaches beyond climate metrics alone.  The restoration of living landscapes can also support ecological health, local resilience, and community connection to land.

Healthy soils, perennial vegetation, and biodiverse ecosystems play an important role in strengthening landscape resilience to drought, heavy rainfall, and other climate pressures increasingly affecting island environments.

In island contexts such as Hawai‘i, land restoration also intersects with questions of food resilience and food sovereignty.  A large portion of the food consumed across the islands is imported from thousands of miles away, creating ecological and economic vulnerability while contributing to the broader carbon emissions associated with long-distance food systems.  Regenerative perennial food systems offer one pathway toward strengthening local food production while restoring soil health, biodiversity, ecological function, and the long-term climate resilience of living landscapes.

Potential outcomes include:

• improved soil health, increased water retention, and stronger carbon-rich soils

• habitat for pollinators and native species

• reduced erosion and stronger watershed stability

• regenerative perennial food production that supports local food resilience

• opportunities for learning and engagement in ecological land stewardship and climate-aware land practices

As the project develops, the initiative will seek to collaborate respectfully with local partners while recognizing and learning from Hawai‘i’s longstanding cultural traditions of caring for land and water.

The pilot will implement a high-density, multi-strata agroforestry system designed to mimic natural forest succession while accelerating soil regeneration and long-term carbon storage.

The restoration design draws from regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, and syntropic agroecological principles that prioritize ecological diversity, soil health, and long-term ecosystem resilience.

Key design principles include:

• multi-layer canopy structures

• diverse perennial species assemblages

• soil organic matter accumulation

• minimal soil disturbance

• ecological succession and biodiversity support

• long-term resilience of perennial systems

As perennial vegetation establishes and soil health improves, the system is expected to increase both aboveground biomass carbon and soil organic carbon.  Over time, the site is expected to transition from a low-biomass pasture landscape into a structurally complex perennial ecosystem with significantly greater carbon storage capacity, ecological stability, and biological diversity.

An important aspect of the IMUA pilot is exploring how regenerative agroforestry systems can function not only as ecological restoration projects, but also as living climate infrastructure capable of contributing to measurable carbon drawdown.

By combining ecosystem restoration, perennial food systems, and transparent carbon monitoring within a carefully observed pilot landscape, the project seeks to generate practical insight into how diverse tropical agroforestry systems can rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, and function as long-term carbon sinks.  Through field monitoring, soil carbon measurement, and documentation of restoration practices as the ecosystem develops, the pilot aims to help reduce early-stage uncertainty and lower barriers for implementing similar land restoration and carbon drawdown systems across tropical, subtropical, and island environments.

Understanding how restoration systems rebuild soil, biodiversity, and carbon over time is an important part of the IMUA pilot.  

From the beginning of the project, the site will be approached not only as a restoration landscape, but also as a place for careful ecological observation and climate learning.  As degraded pasture transitions into a diverse perennial ecosystem, monitoring will focus on how soil health, vegetation growth, and ecosystem structure evolve, and how these changes contribute to carbon sequestration through both soil carbon accumulation and vegetation biomass growth.

Kaua‘i’s year-round growing conditions and diverse rainfall patterns create an environment where perennial vegetation can establish and accumulate biomass relatively quickly.  As the system develops, carbon becomes stored both in the living biomass of trees and perennial vegetation and within the soil ecosystem itself, creating combined vegetation and soil carbon reservoirs that can retain carbon for decades as perennial ecosystems establish and evolve.  Together, these vegetation and soil carbon pools form the living carbon infrastructure of the restored ecosystem as it develops over time.

Areas of observation are expected to include:

• baseline soil carbon sampling and periodic re-sampling

• vegetation growth and above-ground biomass carbon development

• canopy structure and ecosystem layering as the system matures

• soil organic matter accumulation and soil health indicators

• biodiversity observations within the evolving ecosystem

Together, these observations help build transparent field knowledge about how tropical agroforestry restoration systems function as living carbon sinks, storing carbon across both vegetation biomass and soil systems as perennial ecosystems establish, mature, and continue accumulating carbon over time.

As the pilot develops, IMUA hopes to collaborate with a small network of local and global organizations, research partners, and scientific advisors who can help inform ecological observation and carbon monitoring approaches.

These collaborations may include soil laboratories capable of conducting baseline soil carbon testing, ecological monitoring specialists, and academic researchers interested in studying tropical agroforestry systems, soil regeneration, and ecosystem restoration outcomes.

The project draws on current scientific research and evolving insights from the carbon removal field to inform monitoring approaches aligned with emerging nature-based climate frameworks.

Over time, the goal is to document lessons from the site in a way that contributes to the broader field of regenerative land stewardship and nature-based climate solutions.

Kaua‘i, long known as the Garden Isle, holds landscapes of extraordinary beauty and ecological richness.  At the same time, it carries the living story of lands that have been shaped by generations of cultivation, change, and renewal.

Through thoughtful restoration and regenerative stewardship, these landscapes hold the potential not only to heal soil and watersheds, but also to contribute to broader efforts to restore ecological balance and climate resilience.

Our hope is that this pilot may serve as a place of learning and inspiration, demonstrating how degraded land can once again become living, abundant ecosystems that nourish biodiversity, community, and the climate we all share.

With humility and deep respect for the land and its traditions of stewardship, we invite others to walk alongside this work.

For Kaua‘i.

For Hawai‘i.

For the living Earth.

In gratitude and reverence—Imua!