Building Biocarbon and Rural Development in West Africa

Summary

This 4 year regional programme is funded by Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and spans across three countries in West Africa: Mali, Guinea and Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone the programme is being implemented in partnership with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the University of Helsinki, the University of Eastern Finland, Njala University and Fourah Bay College from Sierra Leone. The Building Biocarbon and Rural Development in West Africa (BioDev) programme was launched in March 2013 when CIFOR established an office in Freetown and the project is still at early stages of planning.

The purpose of the programme is ‘to develop and implement science-based, validated, high value biocarbon approaches to sustainable rural development across a range of contrasting locations in West and East Africa, and to disseminate these results and build capacity for their scaling up in Africa’. Furthermore, the programme aims to generate critical information on how to better link climate change mitigation and adaptation to make these actions work effectively to enhance the livelihoods of rural communities. In order to achieve these objectives the BioDev programme focuses on implementing forestry, agroforestry and tree planting programmes on the ground to enhance carbon stocks, but also to increase climate change resilience and promote local livelihoods by creating additional income generating activities from forestry and tree farming. This is what the BioDev programme refers to as high-value biocarbon development.

One of the key programme work packages is sustainable forest management. REDD+ is included as an option for local communities to sustainably conserve forest resources. Specifically for Sierra Leone, the programme has identified strong government support for the establishment of national REDD+ strategies and mechanisms. A separate training budget of EUR 760,000 has been allocated to local and national trainings on REDD+. Furthermore, one of the programme outcomes is to improve national policy and capacity in biocarbon related matters, such as REDD+, CDM, VCS and AFOLU.