REDD+ is an idea that has launched a thousand projects. It’s essentially a way to monetize forests’ ability to store carbon and put that money in the hands of communities who can protect them.

Blue Ventures, a U.K.-based NGO, saw the U.N.’s reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) program as an opportunity to finance conservation in Madagascar. It was an attractive proposition, tackling two of the African nation’s most debilitating problems — forest destruction and poverty — at once.

Nepal’s Indigenous peoples have suffered a litany of human rights violations over the past five decades as a result of abusive conservation policies, said Amnesty International and the Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC), in a new report published today.

In 2019, Norway committed to pay $150 million to Gabon to protect its forests under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI).

A curious fact about Kenya's conservation efforts is that there is no institution, government or any other authority, that can authoritatively give the exact figure of the forest cover.

Over the years, even government ministers have been giving varying indicators on whether the country is losing its forests or gaining cover.

To address this and other issues, the government is doing a comprehensive environmental audit to establish the status of biodiversity and land health in the country.

The African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) gathered representatives from 31African Countries, the private sector, national and international organizations, and youth ambassadors in Kigali, Rwanda, to participate in its Fifth Annual Partnership Meeting.

They have a common goal: tobeginrestoring100 million hectares of land by2030.The hybrid event was a first of its kind for the partnership and featured thelaunch of a documentary film,AFR100 Presents: The Grand African Green Up,which highlights local action for restoring biodiversity, food systems, and theclimate.

• Researchers looked at 31 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that hold almost 70% of the world’s tropical forests and 62% of the total feasible natural climate solution potential, and found that most of the tropical forested countries looking to benefit from carbon markets still need to define community carbon rights.
• There is significant public and private interest to use carbon markets to fight climate change and work toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, with the global LEAF coalition pushing to mobilize at least $1 billion to tackle deforestation and forest degr

THE Forestry and Value Chains Development Programme (FORVAC) has brought in positive results in
Namtumbo District, Ruvuma Region as villagers are no longer engaging in illegal logging as it was in the past.

Reports have it that villagers are now aware of the dangers that comes with illegal logging and
deforestation and in turn they collectively conserve the nearby forests so as to earn cash that
makes them to execute different village development projects.

Early this year the world commemorated the International Day of Forests, with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) joining Uganda to reiterate their commitment to restoring forests and degraded lands, as well as calling for action to reduce deforestation.

Background
The call for forest restoration and better management of the ecosystem was made during a high level national dialogue organised jointly by FAO, the European Union, Sweden and the Ministry of Water and Environment.

The High Court in Kampala has ruled that National Environmental Authority was right to allow sugarcane growing on Bugoma Forest land.

Conservationists including Water and Environment Media Network Uganda Limited (WEMNET-U), National Association of Professional Environmentalists(NAPE) and the African Institute for Energy Governance went to court challenging the Environment and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) report approved by NEMA that allowed Hoima Sugar Limited to conduct sugarcane growing in the disputed Bugoma Central Forest Reserve.

Patches of forest cleared and tended by Indigenous communities but lost to time still show more food bounty for humans and animals than surrounding forests.

The Congo Basin’s forests and peatlands are a major component of Earth’s life-support systems, and it is a key supplier of vital minerals needed to build a low carbon economy. The case for the people of the Congo to benefit from not exploiting these resources is irrefutable.

Few people, if asked to name the most strategic countries in the world, would place the Democratic Republic of Congo at the top of the list. But the natural resources of the DRC will be critical to the existential battle to save the planet.