In December 2020, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a USD 1 million grant for the Green Finance for Sustainable Landscapes (GF4SL) project, a joint initiative of the Collaborative Partnership on Forest (CPF). This project will be executed by UNEP and CIFOR in between 2021 and 2024.
The GF4SL aims at influencing the enabling conditions for commitments toward deforestation-free, sustainable commodity production and other forms of sustainable land use. The overall objective of the project is boosting bank and investor interest to increase capital flows towards restoration and deforestation-free agriculture.
More specifically, the project aims to increase commitments on deforestation-free financing for agribusiness sector / forestry companies, as part of transition to sustainable commodity production systems. A second outcome of this project is to develop a ‘standardized’ framing, measurement and monitoring of environmental and social impact related to agri/forestry loans/investments by using a standard set of key performance indicators (e.g. ha of forests protected, restored, amount of greenhouse gas emissions reduced, improvement of income for smallholder farmers, etc.).
The project's third outcome is enhancing the capacity of community-based forestry and agribusiness producer groups and enterprises to better access business knowledge products and private investment for socially and environmentally sustainable projects. By collecting, structuring and disseminating information on how sustainable and deforestation-free land use production models can be commercially viable, the project will fill in important information gaps that today act as barriers to the more active engagement of community-based forestry and agribusiness producer groups private finance institutions and companies to secure private investment for shifting their production models. The activities of the project will therefore directly contribute to the acceleration of the necessary shift of land use to make it more sustainable, reduce deforestation, and reduce negative climate impacts.
Through this initiative, the CPF will be facilitated to use its convening power to bring together a broad range of actors across nongovernmental, governmental and private sectors to promote the adoption of green and sustainable principles in finance across thematic areas of sustainable forest management. The CPF will also support sharing of green finance ideas between sectors to promote replication and support the development, testing and validation of innovative forest finance products and systems.