Spread over three countries – Cameroon, the Republic of Congo and Gabon – the Tri-National Dja-Odzala-Minkébé (TRIDOM) transborder forest covers 178,000 km², or 10% of the Congo Basin rainforest. It contains large numbers of elephants, chimpanzees and gorillas, as well as numerous other species and habitats. The area, of which 97 percent is covered in forest, is an important and productive carbon sink.
The forests of TRIDOM are increasingly lost due to slash-and-burn agriculture, unsustainable logging, an expanding agroindustry and large-scale mining. Forest destruction will lead to immense CO2 emissions. “The Lungs of Africa” will be lost, and with it, its function in regulating the continent’s climate. Climate change exacerbates the already severe threats to the area’s biodiversity.
Integrated Landscape Approach
These threats to this precious forest can only be addressed in an integrated landscape approach that confronts all the different problems facing the region’s conservation.
MoMo4C Action In TRIDOM Landscape
WWF Cameroon leads the work in the TRIDOM landscape. Through multi-stakeholder engagement, the program supports the development of business cases in sustainable community forestry, non-timber forest product (NTFP) and cocoa production. In collaborating with local communities, special focus is given to the engagement of women and youth.
The engagement of vulnerable groups is generated from the stakeholder consultation process. These groups are consulted separately to avoid external influences, and their opinions are taken into account. An interpreter is called upon for a better understanding of the subjects developed. They sit in equal proportion and with equal voice at the level of the municipal multi-stakeholder platform. These groups are particularly encouraged to form stable associations capable of developing viable projects of which they are promoters. For all this they benefit from special support from MoMo4C.
Like much of Northern Ghana, the Mole Ecological Landscape is vulnerable to climate change. A Rocha Ghana therefore works with communities, district assemblies and companies on reducing deforestation and promoting the restoration of savanna woodlands around Mole National Park. Through business competitions, Momo4Climate selects and supports entrepreneurs that make businesses out of planting trees, sustainable charcoal production, community collection and processing of naturally growing shea nuts.
The Mole Ecological Landscape is a biodiversity hotspot in the north of Ghana surrounding the Mole National Park, Ghana’s largest protected area. The area covers 17 thousand square kilometres and supports an estimated population of 320,000. The landscape forms part of the Volta basin, which contributes significantly to Ghana’s economic development through the provision of vital water resources and support for agriculture activities.
Communities living across this savannah landscape are closely dependent on local natural resources. Agriculture and livestock rearing are the major source of employment and people collect non-timber forest products (NTFPs), wild fruits and nuts like Shea and DawaDawa.
Subsistence Farmers Affected By Climate Change
Like much of Northern Ghana, the Mole Ecological Landscape is vulnerable to climate change. Dry weather conditions, high levels of poverty, heavy reliance on rain-fed agriculture for livelihoods coupled with unsustainable resource use, governance, and policies negatively influence the livelihoods of communities in the Mole landscape who are mostly subsistence farmers.
The communities and district assemblies within the landscape are considered one of the most vulnerable in a preliminary vulnerability assessment conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana.
Climate change is expected to have a greater impact on crop yields in the area, and the severity will become greater as warming increases. Importantly, many of the areas where crop yields are likely to decrease are also areas that are already experiencing food insecurity. Communities’ resilience to climate change relies on a combination of their ability to adapt to new conditions and also their capacity to recover from, frequent and severe disturbances.
Momo4c Action In The Mole Ecological Landscape
To improve climate resilience in the Mole ecological landscape, A Rocha Ghana works with individual entrepreneurs, community associations and companies to transition environmentally unfriendly livelihood and economic ventures into more sustainable, and green investments. These need to be restorative, enhance ecosystem services and help people living in the landscape build adaptive capacity.
Through baseline studies, A Rocha has identified prospective community association and individual enterprises that have potential for benefitting from targeted finance lending schemes that will eventually lead to transition and improvement of current destructive livelihood ventures.
Collaboration with public and private sector
MoMo4C is also working with companies such as Form International on reducing deforestation and promoting the restoration of savanna woodlands around Mole National Park. Business competitions are organized to find and support the best entrepreneurs that make businesses out of planting trees, sustainable charcoal production, community collection and processing of naturally growing shea nuts and other high-end non-timber forest products. Local communities and particularly women are involved in business development.
In partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency of Ghana, we use the baseline in-depth vulnerability assessment of the landscape to support district assemblies to align adaptation to the National Adaptation Plans and further use these plans to drive investments for adaptation interventions.
The program also builds on several other landscape or sub-jurisdictional programs on landscape restoration and emissions reduction under Ghana’s REDD Plus strategy as well as programs by other bi-lateral agencies like GIZ, IUCN, UNDP, EU and AFD as well as commodity sustainability platforms like the Global Shea Alliance.
The Juabeso-Bia & Sefwi Wiawso landscape in Ghana is situated in the Bia-Tano River Basin in the High Forest zone in the Southwest of Ghana. The area is dominated by the Bia Biosphere Reserve and is home to a large population of forest elephants as well as other primates. It serves as an important wildlife corridor between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
The economy and the income of local people in this region largely depend on the production of cocoa. Additional sources of income include tree crops such as palm oil, fruits and timber and staple crops such as cassava, maize, plantain and livestock.
Vulnerable Smallholders
Rates of deforestation and forest degradation are high in the landscape. The transition from shade-tolerant to sun-tolerant cocoa has contributed to the removal of trees. All of these developments have led to large CO2 emissions and more vulnerable smallholders.
Additional threats to the landscape include over-reliance on cocoa, artisanal mining and slash-and-burn agriculture. In order to increase climate, environmental and economic resilience of the landscape, these threats have to be addressed.
Reintroduction Of Shade-Trees: A Win-Win
The return of shade-trees in the cocoa garden will not only contribute to CO2 capture. It will also contribute to climate resilience: soils and biodiversity will be better protected, while local farmers will have better crop insurance and more diversified incomes because of the fruits, nuts, herbs and timber that trees provide.
Momo4c Action In Juabeso-Bia & Sefwi Wiawso
In the Juabeso-Bia and Sefwi Wiawso landscapes, Tropenbos Ghana will facilitate the development of innovative green business and finance models to unlock commitments of landscape stakeholders to reduce deforestation, improve cocoa yields and livelihoods, paying particular attention to female and young Ghanaian entrepreneurs.
These efforts will reduce climate vulnerability associated with the landscape and small-holder farmers’ livelihood. The resulting models will function as examples for other landscapes where the production of agro-commodities and forest encroachment leads to further deforestation and forest degradation.
The Ketapang-Kayong Utara landscape in the West Kalimantan province is dominated by economic activities in production areas. It is a heavily deforested area with important remaining primary forests and a large area of peatlands that are particularly important for climate.
The expansion of concessions for commodities such as rubber and palm oil contribute to one of the highest rates of deforestation in any province in Indonesia, while the area is home to the last intact low-land forest of Borneo and harbours one of the largest wild populations of orang-utan.
Both village resource management and the protection of remaining natural forests are challenged within the landscape.
Peatland Fires
The area is hit hard by peat land fires due to extreme weather as the impact of climate change. Drained and degraded peatlands in combination with the current land use practices have triggered recurrent fires.
At the same time, the traditional agroforestry system is under threat for conversion to palm oil monoculture, with estimated 20-34% palm oil plantation were independent smallholders. Currently, incentive mechanisms to protect forest areas are not in place and local communities have limited options for sustainable alternative livelihood due the lack of skills, knowledge, and capacity. In addition, local smallholders and entrepreneurs experience insufficient linkages to market and financial support to develop community-based climate resilient businesses.
Important Peat Domes
The Ketapang-Kayong Utara landscape includes important Peat Domes that have to be protected to prevent massive emissions of CO2 and other, more potent greenhouse gasses. Yet the landscape itself is hit hard by the impacts of climate change.
Adaptation And Mitigation Should Go Hand In Hand The occurrence and intensity of droughts are on the rise, leading to reduced agricultural productivity and increasing forest and peat land fires. The latter are notorious in the region, contributing to massive additional CO2 emissions. This negative feedback loop shows how urgent both climate adaptation and mitigation are in this landscape, and how they should go hand in hand. Biodiversity is under pressure from these various issues although parts of the landscape are still intact and require robust, inclusive protection and sustainable management.
Momo4c Action In The Ketapang-Kayong Utara Landscape
Tropenbos Indonesia works in the Ketapang-Kayong Utara landscape to increase economic diversity and improve resilience of smallholder farmers to climate change impacts. It will involve various stakeholders such as local government, companies, smallholders, financial institutions, and NGOs to address landscape challenges to attract innovative financing mechanisms to develop climate resilient businesses. The focus is on community-based entrepreneurs with projects for climate resilient solutions that will attract more investment towards the landscape.
Tropenbos Indonesia will improve the capacity of smallholders to connect to agro-forestry value chains and to connect to responsible buyers and sustainable investors. The entrepreneurs and local farmers will achieve business cases for diverse income streams that positively contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
MoMo4C will provide technical assistance and business case development support to allow these community-based businesses to scale up in order to access adequate sources of capital.
Mozambique’s Zambezi Delta is formed by the confluence of the Zambezi and Shire rivers and includes some 100,000 hectares of mangroves, the largest stand in East Africa. It is a global biodiversity conservation hotspot with significant populations of large mammals including the African buffalo, waterbuck and hippopotamus, as well as elephants, sable antelopes, Lichtenstein’s hartebeest, reedbucks, lions, leopards, wild dogs, and spotted hyenas. The economy of the delta is characterized by subsistence farming, livestock grazing, fishing and crops such as maize and sugarcane. The basin is crucial for tourism, power generation and commercial fisheries.
The Zambezi basin faces a set of challenges including unsustainable fisheries, deforestation, mining, infrastructure development, illegal logging, poaching, and unsustainable agriculture practices. These threats contribute to climate vulnerability and are in turn exacerbated by climate change.
Productivity is under threat. Stakeholders, particularly companies and investors, are not fully aware of the risks of climate change, and the role that healthy landscapes can play to contribute to mitigating the causes and adapting to the impacts.
At the same time, due to lack of investable projects available, investors, including large corporations, are not triggered to make large-scale investments in more sustainable practices.
MoMo4C action in the zambezi delta
WWF Mozambique works to establish an enabling environment in the Zambezi Delta, creating conducive conditions for climate-resilient economic development. By working with local stakeholders, WWF supports the development of green business cases in the landscape, thereby increasing the availability of sustainable investable projects, while tackling the impacts and causes of climate change at a landscape level.
Uganda has been classed “high risk” under the risk assessment for humanitarian crises and disasters with impacts on displaced people and vulnerable groups (Irish Aid, 2018) . To improve climate resilience in the Murchison-Semliki landscape, ECOTRUST is strengthening conservation partnerships that focus on strengthening biodiversity corridors that connect remaining wildlife and forest reserves in the landscape.
The Murchison-Semliki Landscape extends from the Murchison Falls National Park at the northern end of Lake Albert to the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve at the southern end. It is rich in natural resources such as lakes, rivers, national parks, game reserves, tropical high forests, savanna grasslands, woodlands and wetlands. It hosts 39% of Africa’s mammal species, 52% of its bid species and 19% of its amphibian species along with 14% of the plant and reptile species. It is also home to 3.7 million people.
Rapid Deforestation
The once continuous forests is now reduced and disaggregated into large and small forest patches. Population growth, agricultural expansion, migration, poverty, infrastructure development and fuelwood collection all contribute to rapid deforestation. Recent oil exploitation adds to the mix.
Affected by Extreme Weather Events
Uganda is already experiencing impacts of climate change and is ranked as “high risk” under the risk assessment for humanitarian crises and disasters with impacts on displaced people and vulnerable groups, and increasing inequality and social-economic vulnerability. The Murchison-Semliki landscape is increasingly affected by extreme weather events.
Deforestation and biodiversity loss further aggravate the vulnerability of the landscape and its inhabitants to climate change impacts such as drought and flooding. Due to high levels of poverty and inequality, the smallholder farmers in the landscape are the most affected.
MOMO4C Action In The Murchison-Semliki Landscape
To improve climate resilience in the landscape, the implementing partner ECOTRUST is convening a conservation partnership that focuses on strengthening wildlife corridors that connect wildlife and forest reserves that are home to important remaining populations of chimpanzees and other wildlife in the landscape. The multi-stakeholder partnership develops conservation arrangements with smallholder farmers to protect and restore forests and other natural ecosystems across and around the corridors.
A Landscape Action Plan has been developed in which all stakeholders have a say and that outlines how key climate and other environmental challenges will be tackled in the years to come. This outline forms the basis for a Landscape Investment Plan that has been developed and designed to attract investments with a particular focus on women and youth.
ECOTRUST and its local partners seek collaboration with relevant government agencies including the national REDD+ agency to make sure that interventions are linked to national and local policies.
