For over a decade, the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) has been supporting smallholder farmers in vital forest restoration activities. Now, the FFF has joined a new project for smallholder forest and farm producers to support the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100). 

The ambition of AFR100 is huge: to bring at least 100 million hectares of degraded and deforested land in Africa into restoration by 2030. That’s approximately the same area as the country of Bolivia, or twice the size of Spain. 

Trees are the ultimate carbon capture and storage machines. Forests absorb the carbon in the atmosphere and lock it away for many years, helping to combat climate change. And Africa has the largest reforestation opportunity of any continent in the world. 

Speeding up forest restoration

Established in December 2015, the AFR100 is a country-led effort involving 34 African countries, launched by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the World Resources Institute (WRI), Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the World Bank. 

For the past few years, the FFF has been working in collaboration with the Forests4Future project (F4F) to support the AFR100 initiative and large-scale land restoration. The F4F project works at grassroots level with smallholder farmers and forest producers to incorporate elements of forestry into agriculture and to restore the ecological and productive functions of degraded landscapes. The F4F project is funded by BMZ and implemented by German development agency GIZ in collaboration with the FFF in six African countries (Ethiopia, Madagascar, Togo, Benin, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire) to link smallholders and their organizations with processing enterprises. 

This year, together with other partners, the FFF has joined a new four-year project led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and funded by the Government of Germany to provide local communities, including smallholder forest and farm producer organizations, Indigenous Peoples, and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, with direct financial and technical assistance to speed up forest restoration. The African countries currently involved in this project are the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Togo and Tanzania. 

‘Greening the African Horizon’

As participants heard at the recent Global Landscapes Forum conference in Nairobi and online, the ambition of AFR100 matches the scale of the challenge. Over half (65 percent) of the land in Africa is affected by degradation, and it’s estimated that 3 percent of the GDP is lost every year due to the lower crop yields caused by the depleted soil and nutrients. Not only that, land degradation and forest loss impact the everyday lives of local communities by reducing food supply and threatening water security. 

Climate change is making the situation even worse – especially for small-scale rural forest and farm producers, who depend on stable weather patterns, healthy soils, tree cover and water to maintain their livelihoods. 

Balancing land tenure and livelihoods with forest restoration

Key to the success of AFR100 is collaboration between partners. In an expert session at the GLF Africa conference, participants took a deep dive into the importance of land use rights and how to balance local livelihoods and economic opportunities with climate and environmental restoration initiatives. The session, called “Effective ecosystem restoration to tackle climate change, biodiversity and food insecurity: scaling up through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration”, was hosted by BMZ and moderated by Kisoyan Philip (Facilitator for FFF implementation in Kenya).   

The role of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women and young people as legitimate stewards, rights holders and decision-makers in the restoration activities was central to the discussion. 

As Tiina Vähänen, FAO Forestry Division Deputy Director, explains, “to be effective and sustainable, forest and landscape restoration must embrace local communities, tap into their local knowledge, and support their livelihoods and economic opportunities”. 

AFR100 has the potential to make a huge difference in terms of global climate resilience. Forest landscape restoration plays a role in improving livelihoods, strengthening rural resilience, creating new prospects for local communities, women and young people. By adding value to farm businesses, landscape restoration can have a positive impact on the rural people involved in the process. 

As a way forward, the session concluded that forest landscape restoration needs to be scaled to better align local projects and contributions with global climate goals.

Rewatch the GLF session online here.