3 September 2018: The African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) is close to fulfilling its goal of restoring 100 million hectares by 2030. New pledges totaling more than 11 million hectares were made by Burkina Faso, Tanzania and Togo ahead of the recently concluded Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) Africa 2018. To date, 27 African countries have made pledges to restore more than 96.4 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.

According to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), Africa loses around three million hectares of forest annually, while 65% of land is impacted by degradation. AFR100 aims to contribute to an integrated and sustainable approach to forest and land restoration through supporting a “mosaic” of interventions such as agroforestry, planting, and natural tree regeneration, while also contributing to improved ecological functionality of degraded landscapes and the well-being of local communities.

During GLF Africa 2018, which took place from 29-30 August 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya, Burkina Faso announced that it would restore five million hectares of degraded forest landscapes, adding to pledges made by Tanzania and Togo to restore 5.2 million and 1.4 million hectares, respectively. The pledges were announced on the sidelines of the 3rd AFR100 Annual Partnership meeting, which convened from 26-28 August 2018 in Nairobi, Kenya. The key objectives of the meeting, which brought together 177 participants, included: highlighting landscapes where restoration is being successfully implemented and could be scaled up; showcasing policies and incentives that have supported implementation of large-scale forest landscape restoration (FLR); announcing new pledges to the AFR100 Initiative; and highlighting initiatives by development partners, international finance institutions and mechanisms to support implementation of their AFR100 commitments.

The commitments announced under AFR100 support the Bonn Challenge, the New York Declaration on Forests and the African Resilient Landscapes Initiative.

Discussions at GLF Africa 2018 also touched on strategies to enhance the application of monitoring tools, such as the Bonn Challenge Barometer of Progress and the Collect Earth tool, to track progress in achieving the intended country contributions. Two complementary monitoring tools were highlighted at the AFR100 partner meeting: TRENDS.EARTH, developed by Conservation International, which monitors land use changes using earth observations to measure progress towards SDG target 15.3 on land degradation neutrality; and the Global Land Tool Network, coordinated by the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), which tracks progress in access to land and tenure security issues.

AFR100 is a pan-African, country-led effort launched in 2015 with the overall goal of bringing 100 million hectares of land across Africa into restoration by 2030. The commitments announced under AFR100 also support the Bonn Challenge adopted in Germany in 2011, whose overall objective is to restore 150 million hectares by 2020, the New York Declaration on Forests that stretches the goal to 350 million hectares by 2030, and the African Resilient Landscapes Initiative (ARLI) to promote integrated landscape management to contribute to adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. AFR100’s lead implementation agency is the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which hosts the Secretariat. The Initiative is implemented with support from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and World Resources Institute (WRI), with funding from the World Bank and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). [AFR100 News Release on 3rd Partner Meeting] [GLF News Release on AFR100 Pledges] [Land Portal News Release on AFR100 and GLF Africa 2018 Discussions]