Discover how jurisdictional approaches developed by/in regions of Côte d’Ivoire can be a game changer, fostering coordination among stakeholders to address environmental issues and promote sustainable commodity production.
The EU REDD Facility’s project in Côte d’Ivoire aims to overcome challenges in forest restoration through participatory land-use planning and securing land tenure. It focuses on developing village-level land-use planning methods to achieve a balance between agriculture and forestry. It also targets the gender-oriented delivery of land certificates on 2500 hectares of forest areas.
As the EU REDD Facility marks its 10-year anniversary, it has released a summation of key lessons learned in working to strengthen efforts to ensure tropical forests meet their potential to limit climate change. Over the last decade the Facility has worked towards empowering stakeholders to strengthen the rule of law, to promote sustainable land use and investment, and to enhance supply chain transparency.
These insights are shared as the 14th edition of the EU Development Days on the Green Deal for a Sustainable Future gets underway. The EU has a strong track record of global leadership in dealing with deforestation and forest degradation, and the European Green Deal commits to measures to support deforestation-free value chains. The Facility’s work is aligned with this ambitious response to the continued widespread destruction of the world’s forests.
“Significant progress has been made over the past few years towards ending deforestation and understanding the drivers and solutions to this complex problem,” said Christophe Van Orshoven, EU REDD Facility Team leader. However, he said it was necessary for “governments, the private sector and citizens all over the world to urgently step up action to protect and restore the world’s forests.”
The lessons that the Facility has learned over the past decade include the need for clear and well-enforced legal frameworks for land use, land-use planning that is participatory and collaborative, and partnership approaches that build an enabling environment for sustainable land-use.
“We hope that these lessons help to shape and accelerate future action”, said Van Orshoven. In years ahead, the Facility intends continued support to countries to find innovative approaches and solutions to their land-use governance and development goals, and opportunities for dialogue and partnership.
The EU REDD Facility has taken stock of three years of testing the payments for environmental services (PES) mechanism in Côte d’Ivoire, which aims to help restore and conserve forest cover. Lessons learnt from pilot projects and discussions with national stakeholders led to the updating of the guidelines for project developers interested in implementing direct incentives for forest restoration.
When a major drought hit the South-West of Côte d’Ivoire in 2015, much of the expected harvest of the country’s main commodity — cocoa — was lost and the livelihoods of thousands of smallholder farmers were jeopardised. “I nearly lost my entire cocoa plantation, except for in the areas where I had large trees,” says Kouassi Akoura Apolinaire Yao, a young farmer who manages a two-hectare plantation near Méagui, 400 km west of the capital Abidjan. “It was these trees’ shade that saved the cocoa plants.”
This policy brief shares lessons learnt from FLEGT, REDD+ and zero-deforestation supply chain initiatives to help overcome some of the governance challenges hindering effective restoration of deforested or degraded land in tropical forest countries.
The EU REDD Facility and the Finance Initiative of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP FI) have proposed financial solutions to scale-up zero-deforestation cocoa production to the Ivorian Government and its partners. These solutions were developed based on the economic modelling of agroforestry and intensification schemes currently piloted by three private sector actors in the cocoa sector.
