Regional Workshop on Smallholder Forest Landscape Restoration in West Africa

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) has expanded as a concept and an ambition since the publication of the ITTO Guidelines for the Restoration, Management and Rehabilitation of Degraded and Secondary Tropical Forests, which ITTO developed in collaboration with IUCN, WWF, CIFOR and FAO in 2002. Recent global FLR commitments include the Bonn Challenge; the CBD’s Aichi Biodiversity Target 15; the New York Declaration on Forests; Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15; and the United Nations Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 (UNSPF) and Global Forest Goal 1. All these commitments require efforts to prevent or reverse forest landscape degradation and to contribute to global efforts against climate change.
 
West African forests on public lands are state-owned classified forests (forêts classées). Many have been degraded over decades as a result of population growth, grazing, fire and other pressures. In some cases, this degradation has been exacerbated by civil conflicts, which have caused people to occupy forests and intensify their use for shelter, woodfuel and subsistence farming.
 
On the other hand, smallholder forestry organized as community forest plantations offers considerable potential for FLR because it can increase the local supply of woodfuel and at the same time strengthen livelihoods based on timber products. The aim of this workshop, which is being co-organized by ITTO and Togo’s Ministry of Environment, Sustainable Development and Nature Protection, is to explore the role of FLR as a viable land-use option on public lands in West Africa.  Specifically, the workshop will:

• Provide an update on global FLR initiatives, including the recently drafted ITTO guidelines on FLR in the tropics, prepared as a joint initiative of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests.
• Discuss lessons learned from the designing and implementation of FLR programmes and projects at the local to national levels in Africa, with a focus on the involvement of forest plantation smallholders in ITTO member countries in West Africa (namely Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Mali and Togo).
• Analyze government policies, measures and capacity building for improved silvicultural practices and legal and sustainable supply chains for smallholders in West Africa.
• Identify recommended actions to promote smallholder-based FLR in ITTO member countries in Africa to support the achievement of the SDGs, especially SDG 15 “Life on land”, SDG 12 “Sustainable supply and consumption”, and SDG 8 “Decent work and economic growth”.

The workshop is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) as part of the ITTO Programme on Legal and Sustainable Supply Chains.
 
Due to budget constraints, sponsored participants will be limited to ITTO focal points and selected FLR experts.

To learn more about what happened at the workshop, click here.