Objectives
Fund scope, strategic framework and theory of change
Fund scope
After the oceans, forests are Earth’s largest storehouse of carbon. This means healthy, resilient forests not only provide environmental and social benefits for animals and humans, but they also are one of the solutions for slowing and reversing global climate change. The countries of Central Africa are home to the second largest tropical rainforest in the world. Unfortunately, forest loss and degradation has accelerated due to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions in the region, fragmented support, and misdirected investments.
Ambitious but timely, the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) addresses these challenges by supporting strategic, holistic and country-level REDD+ and low emission development investments in Central African high-forest cover countries. The trust acts as a platform for partners to coordinate contextually relevant REDD+ projects in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon—facilitating cross-border learning and information sharing.
By focusing on implementing National Investment Frameworks, encouraging donor coordination, and promoting inclusive participation, CAFI helps local communities and authorities reverse and, hopefully, stop forest loss by mitigating climate change, reducing poverty, and contributing to sustainable and inclusive development.
Strategic framework and theory of change
The Central African Forest Initiative contributes to low emission development and investments in land use and forestry sectors of participating countries. To achieve the socio-economic transformation required to reduce emissions, national and local policies and measures must be put in place that address the proximate drivers (such as agriculture, wood energy, forestry and infrastructure/mining) alongside the indirect ones (e.g. lack of land use planning and insecure land tenure, poor governance, or rapid population growth).
Because countries differ on their national investment frameworks, each focusing on a specific set of drivers, CAFI supports national governments in rolling out programmes that decrease land conversion and increase food security; offer alternatives to wood energy; enhance capacities of forestry sector institutions; promote, monitor and enforce legal frameworks for sustainable forest management; minimize infrastructure and mining footprints; ensure balanced representation of interests in land use planning decisions; slow population growth and migration to forests, and improve inter-ministerial coordination and governance.
> $55M 
$55M - $25M
$25M - $5M
< $5M
