Kokota Island

Kokota is a tiny island, about one square kilometre with a population of roughly 500, in the Pemba part of the Zanzibar Archipelago. Severe deforestation there once dried up water sources and made farming unsustainable, but since 2008 the nonprofit Community Forests International, founded by Pemba resident Mbarouk Mussa Omar together with Canadian tree planter Jeff Schnurr, has planted more than two million trees on Kokota and neighbouring Pemba. The project also built the island's first school and installed rainwater storage tanks, and has become an internationally cited example of community-led climate adaptation.