African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative

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With the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) , trees are to be planted on an area of ​​100 million hectares by 2030. The reforestation program was presented at the end of 2015 on the sidelines of the UN climate conference COP21 negotiations in Paris and is funded with 1 billion dollars from the World Bank and 0.54 billion dollars from private investors. The German Development Aid Ministry (BMZ) is an advisory project partner.

The planned forest area that is to be afforested in country-specific programs corresponds to three times the area of ​​Germany.

Project participants

Initiators:

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) aims to promote pan-African socio-economic development.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) is active as a global research institute in more than 50 countries. a. in the United States, China, India, and Brazil.

As of June 2016, 13 African countries are taking part, which have agreed to reforest a total of 41 million hectares of degraded land:

In order to reach the target of 100 million hectares, other countries have to be convinced, says Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven from the German Ministry of Development and former Director of the World Bank.

According to the British daily The Guardian , Cameroon , Burundi and Congo-Brazzaville have also agreed to support the initiative.

Investors:

  • World Bank - $ 1,000 million
  • Ecoplanet Bamboo - $ 175 million by 2020
  • Sustainable Forest Investments (Netherlands) - $ 150 million by 2030
  • Terra Global Capital - $ 100 million by 2030
  • Green World Ventures - $ 65 million by 2020
  • Moringa Partnership - $ 56.5 million by 2030
  • NatureVest (subsidiary of Nature Conservancy )
  • Permian Global

Moringa Partnership wants to use the money to support companies that are already established in this business and to support them with further growth.

Other partners:

Aims of the AFR100 program

"The restoration of forest landscapes is Africa's gift to the world," said Andrew Steer, President and CEO of the World Resources Institute on the sidelines of the COP21 negotiations.

According to an analysis by this institute, the implementation of the obligations will lead to a CO 2 reduction of 1.2 gigatons over the next 10 years, which corresponds to 36 percent of Africa's annual emissions and 0.25 percent of global emissions.

"A total of more than 700 million hectares in Africa have the potential for reforestation," said Ibrahim Assane Mayaki , CEO of NEPAD and former Prime Minister of Niger . According to scientific analyzes, this area is affected by soil degradation .

Vincent Biruta, Environment Minister of Rwanda, expects the "restoration of our forest landscapes" ... "prosperity, security and opportunities".

The tasks to be mastered in the project should not be underestimated, according to Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven from the BMZ:

  • Who will take care of reforestation?
  • Who cares for the seedlings?
  • Where should be afforested?
  • How do we involve the women and young people in the village?
  • Who will take care of watering the seedlings?
  • Who do the new wood deposits belong to?
  • There is a lot to plan, discuss with the populations and provide technical support.

Restoration of the African tree population

While forests are growing in Europe and Asia, they are shrinking in Africa, North, Central and South America.

In Malawi and Mali , among others , it has already been proven that reforestation can work.

One million hectares of forest have been restored in the Ethiopian region of Tigray . In addition, the use of wood as a fuel for cooking was advertised and hilly arable land was terraced to prevent soil erosion .

In Nigeria , trees were planted on farms on an area of ​​five million hectares of agricultural land, which, according to the British daily The Guardian, would have increased food security.

The project is unprecedented in its size, said Wanjira Mathai, the head of the Kenyan Green Belt movement , which succeeds her mother, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, campaigning for reforestation in Africa.

Conflicting interests

In Kenya , the rural population is resisting the destruction of forests through the production of charcoal and the export of precious wood. In Kenya, deforestation is already having a negative impact on the water supply.

On the other hand, in Uganda, the conversion of bushland into a forest reserve is not very popular with the rural population and is branded as land grabbing by the press . The Swedish Energy Agency has stopped trading in CO 2 certificates with the Norwegian timber company Green Resources AS due to local conflicts. In the 1990s, the group leased 12,000 hectares of land in Uganda to plant pine trees on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Also in Uganda, the former German FDP politician Manfred Vohrer planted 12,000 hectares of pine on 12,000 hectares in 2002 with the support of the Federal Development Ministry (BMZ) in northwest Uganda. His company Global Woods International AG was described as a negative example in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel .

The German climate finance , an amalgamation of Oxfam , Bread for the World , Germanwatch and the Heinrich Böll Foundation has so far only commented very briefly on the AFR100 project and said "Planting trees is not forest protection".

Further afforestation initiatives

The discussion about the conservation of forests has a long history:

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e With seedlings against climate change , by Eva Raisig, Deutschlandradio Kultur, January 5, 2016
  2. ↑ Afforestation in Africa: 1.5 billion dollars for a large number of trees , Spiegel online, December 7, 2015
  3. ↑ Reforestation of huge forest areas planned in Africa , Der Standard, December 7, 2015
  4. ↑ African states want 100 million hectares of new forest , Augsburger Allgemeine, December 7, 2015
  5. ↑ Reforestation of huge forest areas and promotion of eco-energy , Berliner Zeitung, December 7, 2015
  6. ↑ a b c d RELEASE: African Countries Launch AFR100 to Restore 100 Million Hectares of Land , WRI, December 5, 2015
  7. ↑ a b c African forestry scheme aims to build prosperity by restoring landscape , The Gardian, December 6, 2015
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i African countries launch AFR100 initiative to restore 100 million hectares of forest landscape , BMZ, December 7, 2015
  9. ↑ Commitments toward the AFR100 initiative , AFR100.org, accessed June 17, 2016
  10. ↑ Climate initiative of the Senate - side event of the UN General Assembly in New York ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Senate of the Economy, undated  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.senat-deutschland.de
  11. ↑ a b Ethiopia's farmers fight devastating drought with land restoration , by Duncan Gromko, The Guardian, May 2, 2016
  12. ↑ In Africa, 100 million hectares of new forest are to be created , Die Welt, December 7, 2015
  13. ↑ UN Forest Report: Worldwide deforestation is slowing down , Spiegel online, September 7, 2015
  14. ↑ Africans are planning gigantic reforestation , n-tv, December 7, 2015
  15. ↑ Kenya: War for the Last Forests , by Robert Kibet, Klimaretter.info, May 17, 2015
  16. ↑ German development projects: Climate protection plan without a financing plan , by Dagmar Dehmer, Der Tagesspiegel, December 8, 2015
  17. ↑ a b Displacement as an environmental project , by Susanne Götze, Frankfurter Rundschau, December 22, 2015
  18. ↑ Controversial afforestation in Uganda: Planting trees, displacing farmers , by Susanne Götze , Spiegel online, December 9, 2015
  19. ↑ REDD + in Paris: Many announcements, little news , by Jutta Kill, DeutscheKlimafinanzierung.de, February 9, 2016
  20. ↑ a b Protect by careful use , BMZ, o. J.
  21. ↑ The forests will still burn , by Verena Kern, Klimaretter.info, November 23, 2015
  22. ↑ No climate protection without forest conservation! , BMZ, June 14, 2016
  23. ↑ The Bonn Challenge is a global aspiration to restore 150 million hectares of the world's deforested and degraded lands by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030 , Bonn Challenge
  24. ↑ Background information on the Bonn Challenge , BMUB, March 2015
  25. ^ African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) , World Resources Institute (WRI), accessed June 16, 2016