Restoring forest landscapes in Africa

Project description

Title: Large-scale Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) in Africa (AREECA)
Commissioned by: German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU)
Country: Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda
Lead executing agency: Rwanda: Ministry of Environment (MoE); Kenya: Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF); Malawi: Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining (MNREM); Cameroon: Ministry of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development (MINEPDED) and Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF)
Overall term: 2020 to 2025

Context

Deforestation and land degradation, exacerbated by climate change and unsustainable land use practices, pose a threat to ecosystem functions, land productivity, and food and water security in Africa. Poor resource management, low access to agricultural innovations and resources, and inappropriate policies prevent countries from restoring forest landscapes on a large scale.

Objective

Landscapes provide increased economic, environmental, and climate benefits through large-scale forest landscape restoration (FLR). Partner countries have successfully built their capacity to support large-scale FLR activities.

Approach

Forest landscape restoration is about restoring the ecological and productive functions of degraded ecosystems in tree-rich landscapes, increasing the resilience of the landscapes and the people who live in them. The regenerated forest landscapes also store additional carbon, thus contributing to climate change mitigation.

To achieve significant results at country and regional level, the programme focuses on the development of participatory FLR interventions and implementation in selected areas in the partner countries. The project prepares additional areas for FLR interventions by implementing further measures, obtains further FLR funding, improves knowledge management and strengthens South-South exchanges, including impact monitoring and capacity building.

The programme was commissioned as an IKI collaborative project and implemented jointly with collaborative partners under the leadership of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The partners include the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), the World Resources Institute (WRI), the World Bank Group and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Last Update: July 2021