This focus area work with: 

1. Community demonstration initiatives: Selection and implementation of 15 small-scale community initiatives on forest and land management across the ECOWAS countries. These initiatives are  led by local groups including women's and Indigenous Peoples' organizations. Emphasis through these agroforestry, mangroves and forestry initiatives is on improving livelihoods and adaptation to climate change in transboundary areas with crosscutting focus on gender and social inclusion, but also on sustainable community forestry and land management practices, community agroforestry systems, and sustainable thematic-related entrepreneurship. 

2. Lessons and best practices: Gathering insights and training materials from the 15 demonstration projects to be used in subregional workshops and an info-brief. This will include a gender analysis of project impacts. 

3. Subregional capacity development workshop: Sharing best practices and lessons on community-based forest and land management in West Africa.  

4. Global South-South exchange: Facilitating knowledge sharing with selected countries from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. This exchange will focus on sustainable forest management practices that enhance livelihoods, resilience, gender and social inclusion, and natural resource management.

Under Focus Area 3, FAO collaborates with civil society organizacions to assist them in developing, demonstrating, and disseminating knowledge about community-based sustainable land and forest management in West Africa. This initiative also aims to showcase the potential economic, social and environmental benefits of community-based forestry to the general public and the global environment.

The organizations involved in this project are:

·        Espoir Pour Tous, EPT (Benin)

·        Link-Ghana (Ghana)

·        Vétérinaires Sans Frontières, VSF (Togo)

·        Conservation des Espèces Marines, CEM (Côte d’Ivoire)

·        Development Concern, DEVCON (Nigeria)  

·        Autre Terre (Burkina Faso)

·        Associação dos Amigos para o Desenvolvimento Comunitario de Serra Malagueta, AADCSM (Cabo Verde)

·        Réseau d’Animateurs pour le Développement Integre en Guinee, RADIG (Guinea) 

·        Safer Community Initiative of Liberia, SCIL<s> </s>(Liberia)

·        Freedom From Hunger Campaign, FFHG (Gambia)

·        Njala University (Sierra Leone)

·        Oceanium (Senegal) 

·        Association Nigerienne pour un Développement Durable, ANDD Garkua (Niger) 

·        Groupement Yiriwali Sinsin, GRYSI (Mali)

·        SWISSAID (Guinea Bissau)