NAIROBI (Landscape News) — Tanzania and Togo made significant commitments to restore forested landscapes under the AFR100 Initiative ahead of the Third AFR100 Annual Partnership meeting currently underway in Nairobi.
Tanzania pledged to restore 5.2 million hectares and Togo pledged to restore 1.4 million hectares as part of overall African country-level commitments to restore 100 million hectares of degraded landscapes across the continent by 2030.
The AFR100 meeting is an overture to the two-day Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) conference, which kicks off on Wednesday and will attract 800 delegates to UN Environment headquarters and thousands more online. GLF will also feature an AFR100 side event.
AFR100 feeds into the Bonn Challenge, a commitment to bring 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land under restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030 made during U.N. Climate talks in 2014 in the New York Declaration on Forests. The African Resilient Landscapes Initiative (ARLI), the African Union Agenda 2063, the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other targets are also aligned with AFR100.
Significant achievements have already been met, with Kenya, Rwanda and many other countries across Africa pledging to undertake substantial restoration activities. These pledges contribute to 91 percent of overall AFR100 commitments made to date via 27 countries. More announcements could be forthcoming this week, organizers say.
Countries formulate their restoration targets using the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology known as ROAM.
Forest dwellers have incredible knowledge. There are tracts of forest all over the continent that have been intensively managed for generations by local people, that’s precisely why they are still forests. Brackenhurst Botanic Garden is one of those examples. #thinklandscape https://t.co/19SyabfMMm
— AFR100 Initiative (@Afr100_Official) August 26, 2018
Representatives from AFR100 partner countries, relevant government ministries, financial and technical partners participated in a field trip on the outskirts of Nairobi on Sunday, which will be followed by two days of technical level meetings.
Key objectives of the meeting include: highlighting landscapes where restoration is successfully being implemented and could be scaled up; showcasing policies and incentives that have supported implementation of large-scale forest-landscape restoration; identifying funding sources and driving resource mobilization.
Kenya committed to restore 5.1 million hectares of forests in 2016.
Learn more at AFR100 side event at GLF Nairobi on Wed. Aug. 29 at 4 p.m. local time (1 p.m. GMT).
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