©FAO/Benedicte Kurzen

18 April 2019, Nairobi–The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Forestry Commission of Kenya launched the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) Phase II in the capital to grant forest and farm producers greater potential to reduce poverty while managing resources sustainably and mitigating negative impacts of climate change.

Representatives from FAO, national producers’ organizations (POs), local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international partners including the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) joined forces to celebrate the launch of the facility.

“Natural resources are under increasing pressure and so are the people who depend on them. We are looking at forest and farm producers, who grow, manage, harvest, and process a wide range of natural-resource-based goods and services in forested landscapes for subsistence use and for sale in markets. We see this facility as a useful framework to integrate and link forests and farms, by putting people’s lives at the center of sustainable forest resource management,” said Gabriel Rugalema, FAO Representative in Kenya.   

The challenge facing Kenya today is how to meet the mounting demand for food from a growing population with a diminishing resource base. Forests provide vital ecosystem services across the country and safeguarding them for future generations is of paramount importance.

Rugalema added, “The facility has now built a steady track record, responding to the huge potential of smallholders within these communities especially among women, youth and indigenous peoples. The facility bolsters their potential to conceive and maintain prosperous businesses while gaining a voice to contribute towards shaping future policies.”

Building on actions and results

Kenya signed up to FFF Phase II last year, following a series of successes since it joined in 2014. After the implementation of Phase I, product-base associations were significantly strengthened, allowing Forest and Farm Producer Organizations (FFPOs) to grow members by 800 percent.

This next phase will be piloted in two new counties, Bungoma and Bomet. It will provide support for knowledge, policy options and engagement for more sustainable wood fuel value chains under the Governing Multi-functional Landscapes in Sub-Saharan Africa (GML).

“The important components of forthcoming projects include optimizing mitigation and boosting resilience to climate change through access to the latest knowledge and technologies to encourage communities to adopt environmentally friendly forestry farming methods. The facility will work with FFPOs to help meet Kenya’s Nationally Determined Contributions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2030,” said FAO Forestry Officer, Jhony Zapata.

In Nairobi, discussions concentrated on the approach towards enhancing said organizations, and how to implement existing strategies to ensure the initiative continues to deliver results across Kenya where illegal logging is a consistent problem.

Paving the path towards a brighter future

This partnership between FAO, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and AgriCord, facilitates the fulfilment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Since the launch of Phase I in 2013, the initiative has empowered forest and farm producers and their organizations to establish climate resilient forest landscapes and improved rural livelihoods.

This comes as a growing number of governments are developing integrated climate responses and strategies for sustainable rural economies aimed at reducing poverty and fulfilling the targets of the Paris Agreement, under which countries are obliged to maintain successive Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Apart from Kenya, this phase is implemented in Bolivia, Ecuador, Ghana, Madagascar, Nepal, Viet Nam, Togo and Zambia, with further funding from international donors, including the Swedish Government, which has pledged a five-year commitment to the programme.