Transformational Change in Sustainable Forest Management in Transboundary Landscapes of the Congo Basin

Objectives

To catalyze transformational change at a regional level by scaling up best practices and innovations originating from sustainable forest management in transboundary landscapes. This will be realized through the following project components.

Other

Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency.

Target Groups

Under the regional child project, socio-economic benefits are most directly addressed through the Component 3. The aim is to enforce a regional framework to empower local communities and especially the forest-dependent people to better manage their land and the related forest resources and increase their financial benefits and sustainable revenues through stronger partnerships with the private sector. New business models for community forest enterprises that are driven by the local communities themselves are created. This is enabled through increased access to private financing. In particular, this project will help to bridge the gap between theshort-sighted nature of commodity companies’ business operations, which often ignore longer-term sustainability aspects, and local community producers’ weak access to markets and private finance. This will be achieved by building capacity, strengthening partnerships and catalyzing and scaling private sector funding towards sustainable forest management at the local level through matchmaking.Through the measures described under Component 3 that are applicable throughout the region, communities will increase their negotiation power, access markets and gain more prominence in landscape-level decision-making, and consequently take a better control over the resources that their livelihoods depend on. Integrated land use planning under Component 1 also supports socio-economic benefits, especially through sustainable planning of the emerging sector of vegetable oils, such as palm oil production. For the first time in the Congo Basin, a mapping exercise will identify the areas that best optimize environmental and socio-economic aspects of production further to be integrated in the ILUMPs at the ground level. These regional framework measures for sustainable resource use, when implemented at the local level under the national child projects, can induce long-lasting global benefits. Since forest clearing for subsistence needs is the most significant driver of deforestation in the Congo Basin, creation of an environment that encourages local communities and forest-dependent people to invest in their customary land and use the resources more sustainably will eventually help curb the deforestation trends. As commercial resource operations in the larger region are also emerging, it is critical that sustainable sourcing practices are introduced and encouraged from the start to avoid large-scale ecosystem degradation, and subsequent negative impacts on local livelihoods.