General

This is a contribution to biodiversity conservation by strengthening the capacity to restore 100 million hectares of forest landscape in Africa.

Objectives

Under the second phase of support the AUDA-NEPAD/AFR100 Secretariat aims to actualize the transition from commitments towards implementation by supporting the AFR100 countries in actualizing their restoration commitments on the ground, through various forest and landscape restoration actions. The actualization of the countries restoration commitments will contribute to reversing the negative impacts of deforestation, environmental and land degradation, realize healthy, productive landscapes, enhance livelihoods of smallholder and rural producers, and subsequently build the resilience of rural communities in Africa, who are most susceptible to risk factors. The Concept Note of AUDA-NEPAD/ AFR100 Secretariat for consideration under the New Swedish Strategy for Regional Cooperation in Africa has three components for the Phase 2 Project, which include: 1) Scaling up the Land Accelerator Programme (LAP): Increased support to Women and Youth restoration entrepreneurs 2) Strengthening Resilience through Sustainable Land Restoration: Support to Implementation of Land Restoration Commitments Support to AFR100 3) Implementation Monitoring: Tracking and reporting AFR100 Implementation The proposed four-month inception phase will allow the AFR100 Secretariat to further elaborate on the Concept note, expanding on the envisaged activities and implementation modalities for each of the three project components, particularly Component 2, as well as the associated budget for Phase 2. In addition, during the inception phase, AFR100 secretariat will contibute toAFR100 Management Team (MT) Retreat and Land Accelerator Boot Camp; and will support National Capacity Building Workshop for Strengthening AFR100 Implementation and Upscaling Forest Landscape Restoration in South Africa.

General

Liberia hosts large areas of the Upper Guinean Forest ecosystem, recognised globally for its extremely high biodiversity. The country has committed to conserving 30 percent of its natural forests, essential for the livelihoods of local communities who directly depend on these forests and significant in the global fight against climate change. Despite national policy commitments made by the government at the national and international level and the emergence of numerous private sector initiatives to halt deforestation, Liberia has made little progress reducing deforestation in recent years. Rather, the drivers of deforestation, including illegal and destructive logging and industrial agriculture, are gaining in power and speed. Illegal logging in government-allocated logging concessions covering more than 1 million hectares and industrial-scale logging under community forestry licenses are accelerating at an alarming rate. Huge blocks of forest land inhabited by local communities have been handed out to agro-business. The political elite is grabbing lands from communities for plantations as well. More than 60 percent of Liberia’s 5 million population relies on agriculture for their livelihoods and food for their households. The sector employs more than 80 percent of Liberians with women constituting more than half of the labour force. Instead of supporting smallholders, the government has allocated large tracts of land to concessions for oil palm cultivation. As a result, forest communities in several counties have been devastated by the impacts of industrial oil palm. Environmental and Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs) and local activists that demand respect for community and human rights, and improvements in the overall well-being of communities affected by the oil palm companies, have been harassed, intimidated, and have suffered unlawful arrests. In instances where communities have stood up for their rights, they have been targeted by the state and state-security apparatuses. Liberia’s legal framework governing forests has institutionalised the participation of Local Communities and Civil Society in forest governance. Liberia has also made important progress on land tenure reforms. The country adopted a Land Rights Policy in 2013 formally recognising customary collective community land rights. It passed into law in 2018, providing communities with formal ownership over their customary lands.

General

Agroforestry parklands are the main source of food, fodder and fuel for subsistence farming communities in the Sudano-Sahel - one of the most food insecure regions in the world. This land use system integrates crop and livestock production in agricultural lands with a significant tree cover. The total annual output (as food, fodder and tree products) of these system is referred to as Net Primary Production (NPP). Recent analyses show that the demand for NPP in the region is rapidly increasing while the supply remains nearly constant. In this project we will study factors controlling NPP with the aim to enable optimization of land management and production capacity.Our project, building on an experienced multidisciplinary group with the ambition to employ a PhD student from Burkina Faso, will provide novel agro-ecological knowledge critical to parkland management. We will i)quantify NPP supply of the three main parkland components; crops, trees and grasses, and relate it to several controlling factors, ii)develop a system for national scale NPP monitoring using free and high resolution satellite data, iii)build scenarios of future NPP supply and demand guided by our NPP assessments, population projections, climate scenarios and land stakeholder dialogues, iv)interact with land users and policy actors in workshops for evaluating feasibility of scenarios, hurdles and ways forward, and v)disseminate results through posters, YouTube-films and flyers in local languages.