On 22-23 January 2019, FAO and the Ministry of the Environment for Water and Forests in Guinea organized a workshop to launch the “Support for Forest and Landscape Restoration in Guinea” project.

For two days, the workshop presented key interventions and orientations of the project aimed at strengthening the capacity and understanding of all stakeholders on forest and landscape restoration and their contributions to adaptation, mitigation and resilience. 

Guinea, a key source of water in the sub-region, is highly threatened by climate change. Whether it be food security or social and economic development, it is recognized as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate disasters.

“Climate change is indeed one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Note the effort implemented to try and help numerous communities out of extreme poverty. They suffer these dramatic climate changes without understanding what is happening to them,” said FAO Representative in Guinea, Dr. Mohamed Hama Garba.

The impact of harmful human actions on forest resources is exacerbated by climatic factors. Such degradation is becoming increasingly worrying due to the rate of loss of forest area, the deterioration of water quality, and the drastic decline in the fertility of agricultural land. Therefore, it is a priority to introduce adaptation and mitigation mechanisms to address food and nutrition insecurity.

However, action is already underway. In July 2016, during a high-level round table in Kigali, Rwanda, the Republic of Guinea pledged to restore two million hectares of degraded forest landscapes by 2030. FAO supports this engagement both on a technical and financial level. In doing so, mobilization mechanisms, initiatives and resources – such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and REDD+ – have been enhanced.

The implementation approach of the project relies on participation of targeted populations, decentralized local collectivities, civil society organizations and state infrastructures for water and forest resource management. This requires internalization of the project's intervention framework by different actors. The workshop therefore enabled the stakeholders to grasp ownership of the project's operational intervention framework and to ensure that the objectives were understood and approved by every party.

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René Ifono (FAOGN)