Community forest restoration
How community forest co-management is helping to restore degraded forest landscapes and improve incomes in Tchamba prefecture.
Nursery for the Support of Arboriculture and Horticulture (PSA) cooperative growing seedlings (Photo: PSA cooperative)
In the Tchamba prefecture in the Central region of Togo, forest cover has been rapidly declining. This is due to land conversion for agriculture and illegal logging for firewood and charcoal production, exacerbated by population growth increasing the demand for food and energy.
To combat this, the government of Togo launched, among other initiatives, a community forest-management scheme to restore degraded forest landscapes. But local forest-adjacent communities had limited capacity to participate.
In particular, cooperatives faced low nursery productivity due to lack of inputs and infrastructure, and a high labour burden, especially for women, who were responsible for watering seedlings manually.
Consequently, livelihood opportunities from restoration activities remained largely untapped.
The local Nursery for the Support of Arboriculture and Horticulture cooperative (Pépinière pour le Soutien à l’Arboriculture et l’Horticulture, PSA) had established a co-management agreement between the cooperative and the municipal council for two community forest plots of 11 hectares in total.
The municipal council was to identify land under its ownership for the establishment of the communal forest and mobilise local stakeholders to implement the restoration work. The cooperative was to provide technical supervision of the planting activities and was responsible for post planting monitoring.
However, without the necessary inputs, equipment and capacity, this co-management scheme could not effectively take off or reach its intended scale and impact.
Forest and Farm Facility activities
Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) support allowed the purchase of all inputs – including germplasm – required to produce close to 100,000 tree seedlings as well as the installation of an irrigation system for a tree nursery.
The species produced were selected according to criteria jointly defined with the municipal council, including growth rate, resilience and multifunctional uses such as shade provision, timber production and public amenity.
The planted tree species can also be pruned for fuelwood, benefiting the members of the cooperative responsible for silvicultural management (the management of forest and woodlands), as well as communities living around the communal plantation – particularly young people and women – associated with the established forest areas.
Significance of impact
FFF support has significantly improved the cooperative’s production capacity and enabled the implementation of the community forest plots.
As women are traditionally in charge of taking care of and watering seedlings, the irrigation system helps to significantly reduce their work hours, addressing the high labour burden and freeing time for other productive activities, while also contributing to unlocking new livelihood opportunities linked to forest restoration.
Conclusion
FFF has helped turn a planned but under-resourced forest co-management scheme into a functioning restoration initiative.
The support has enabled the operationalisation of the community forest and thus reduced pressure on natural resources, creating tangible livelihoods and time-saving benefits, especially for the women members of the PSA cooperative.
Further reading
Website: AFR100 Support Programme Togo, FAO.
News: FAO-led programme empowers forest and farm producers to boost restoration efforts in Africa, FAO Regional Office for Africa (2025)
A climate-resilient cooperative business models for cassava processing, Toviho Gaglo (2020), project report