Making Investments work for people and forests in Coastal East Africa (CEA)

General

The pressure of natural resources has increased sharply in East Africa in recent years as the WWF Africa Ecological Footprint Report shows. Population growth and food energy and other commodities rising demand and increase illegal logging cause negative en vironmental and social issues in particular if the land use planning and general management regarding the equitable use of natural resources is weak. A rapidly increasing pressure is the growth of large land based investments including those in the forest sector with many involving expansion in plantation forests. Mozambique and Tanzania are particularly experiencing such large investments in a context where tenure rights are weak for communal land and associated resources despite their importance for livel ihoods and adaptation to change and the incidences of conflicts over land are rising. There is an urgent need to better understand address and find solutions to these conflicts through multi-sector dialogue so as to ensure that this increased investment ca n lead to positive impacts for local livelihoods improvements to forest governance and avoid negative impacts on the environment. The main objective is to strengthen local civil society participation and influence of natural resources particularly forest u se and management decisions and to improve society as a whole to address forest sector investments Tanzania and Mozambique by creating platform for dialogue between civil society and other actors such as government private sector and donors. The project wi ll also promote the interaction between civil society actors in natural resource management and use issues in Tanzania Mozambique Nepal.The second objective of the project is to increase dialogue and cooperation between North and South between actors so th at current and future investment especially in the forestry sector would be ecologically and socially responsible and beneficial to humans and the environment in East Africa.The project supports the new Finnish development policy program priorities 1)promo te human rights democratic and accountable society and 3)Sustainable management of natural resources and environmental protection by promoting equality and democracy and a fairer and more open discussion about natural resources management which will also help the local population and the wider civil society to adapt better to climate change.