With an estimated 2.8 million hectares of forests lost each year, deforestation and land degradation remain significant challenges in Africa. Bringing together diverse public and private sector voices, alongside Indigenous Peoples, scientists and youth, the 2018 Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Africa Conference will foster political and community support to implement the AFR100 Initiative to restore 100 million hectares of degraded landscapes across Africa by 2030.
 

This regional conference focused on the coordination and promotion of international, national and private sector support for forest and landscape restoration, while paving the way forward for forest and landscape restoration implementation. PROFOR joined forces with a wide range of partners in two discussion forums at the GLF Nairobi - one on innovating agroforestry commodity value chains in Africa and an interactive discussion forum on gender and forest landscapes (full recordings of the sessions are available via the links).

Discussion Forum on Gender and Forest Landscapes.
Restoration initiatives come in many sizes and shapes and take place in different environmental and socio-political landscapes. Evidence and experiences have shown that safeguarding the rights of local communities and promoting the voice and influence of their members in an equitable manner must be central in restoration to avoid perpetuating inequalities, to incentivize women and men to contribute to restoration efforts and to provide greater opportunities and enhanced well-being for women and men alike.

The objective of this interactive discussion forum was to extract, share and discuss concrete actions and conditions that have hindered or facilitated success in terms of rights, equality and wellbeing of local and indigenous women and men. The forum featured three different restoration initiatives from East Africa, each presented by a restoration expert with practical experience from the field, followed by interaction with participants. The discussion also planted the seeds for building an empirically grounded framework for understanding progress – or regression – in terms of equality and inclusion in the context of forest and landscape restoration, and provided guidance on how to integrate robust socioeconomic targets and indicators in national and global restoration efforts.

Speakers:

Solange Bandiaky-Badji, RRI
Janet Kabeberi Macharia, UN Environment
Ross Conroy, Komaza
Cecile Ndjebet, REFACOF
Marlène Elias, Bioversity International
Caroline Nguru, Nairobi Water Fund
Celine Butali, Vi Agroforestry

Innovating Agroforestry Commodity Value Chains in Africa

For agriculture to be part of the solution to slow the degradation and clearing of tropical forests and to enhance tree cover in agricultural and degraded landscapes, policies, incentives, and actions will be needed to transform value chains for commodities. This session will stimulate discussions on forward-looking lessons and recommendations derived from the World Bank PROFOR-funded study, “Leveraging agricultural value chains to enhance tropical tree cover and slow deforestation – LEAVES.” The study focused on six commodity production systems (coffee, cocoa, beef, soybean, oil palm, and shea butter) and their impacts on deforestation or restoration of tree cover in deforested landscapes.

The new “LEAVES” paradigm shifts the focus to those innovators among governments, farmers, rural communities, researchers, NGOs, and companies that are finding local solutions and opportunistically tapping into relevant international strategies and programs. The lessons the LEAVES study provides can help harness decades of experience and lessons-learned from East Asia and Latin America for guiding properly adapted best practice approaches to mitigate predictable and/or unintended tradeoffs of increasing agricultural productivity and conserving forests and woodlands in Africa.

Speakers:

Tony Simons, Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
Peter Minang, Leader, Greening Tree Crop Landscapes, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
Emmanuel Ndorimana, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Livestock, Burundi
Carol Mwape Zulu, Environmental and Social Inclusion Specialist, Zambia
Roberto Zolho, Sr. Natural Resources Management Specialist, National Sustainable Development Fund, Ministry of Land, Environment and Rural Development (MITADER), Mozambique
Nora Berrahmouni, Sr. Forestry officer at FAO Regional Office for Africa
Frank Place, Director, CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets
Salina Abraham, Youth Coordinator, GLF
Mi Hyun Miriam Bae, Sr. Social Development Specialist, IFC
William Kwende, Chairman, AgriTech, Burkina Faso
Florence Nkemakonam Anagbogu, NEWMAP, Nigeria
Philippe Dardel, Senior Natural Resource Management Specialist, World Bank
Irene Ojuok, National Technical Specialist, Environment and Climate change (FMNR expert), World Vision International

See the Landscape News article "Incentivize sustainable farming to reverse forest loss in Africa, World Bank report says" for "take aways" from the session.