The Tagua Initiative® (TI) is CI's first flagship project to create a sustainable business within a rain forest community. CI has developed links between rural harvesters of the ivory-like tagua palm nut and button, jewelry, and carving manufacturers around the world.

The Tagua Initiative is designed to help protect the Cotacachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve, one of the world's most diverse rain forest hotspots, while demonstrating the viability of a new model for conservation. In this model, international businesses form partnerships with local groups who sustainably harvest rain forest products. In doing so, they create the incentives that local people need to save forests, rather than cutting them down.

In less than seven years, the Initiative has sold more than 3,500 tons of raw materials and 70 million finished buttons, creating over 1,800 part-time jobs in the community site, including high-quality artisan jobs manufacturing hand-carved buttons for export. Dozens of garment manufacturers have joined the Initiative, including such companies as The Gap, Esprit, Timberland, and Smith & Hawken.

Learn more about the Tagua Initiative.

Please visit our Rain Forest Marketplace for tagua products, including raw tagua nuts.