Supporting AFR100: advancing locally-led forest landscape restoration in Africa
IIED is helping six African countries create policies that enable local communities, Indigenous Peoples, and forest and farm producer organisations to lead forest landscape restoration and build sustainable livelihoods.
A nursery for forest restoration in Malawi (Photo: Duncan Macqueen, IIED)
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) leads the programme ‘Supporting AFR100 by engaging with small-scale forest and farm producers’. This programme contributes to the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, known as AFR100.
Working across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Togo and Tanzania, financial and technical assistance is provided to local communities, including smallholder forest and farm producer organisations and Indigenous Peoples.
The aim is to support these groups to restore forest and farm landscapes, develop businesses linked to restoration and strengthen local livelihoods. The programme will also help them monitor progress, communicate their results and share lessons with others.
What is IIED doing?
As part of the Forest and Farm Facility, which aims to make forest and farm producer organisations the key change agents for delivering climate-resilient landscapes and improved livelihoods, IIED has built a body of evidence demonstrating restoration outcomes are best when overseen by organised groups of producers with the land and collective scale to drive change. Involving them is crucial.
For this project, IIED is working with six country-led programmes to:
• Strengthen the governance and leadership of forest and farm producer organisations
• Help apex-level organisations consult their members and identify how they can contribute more effectively to forest landscape restoration
• Support producer organisations to document successful restoration strategies and engage with and influence relevant policies and laws to upscale those successes, and
• Provide training on organisational governance and advocacy.
