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Trees that are a source of edible fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and oils have traditionally been used to complement and diversify staple-based diets. When integrated into agroforestry systems, they can contribute substantially to food and nutrition security for smallholders – possibly for generations.

In East Africa, the Food Trees project, funded by the European Union, IFAD and GIZ, co-developed tailored ‘food tree portfolios’ with farmers to address the challenges of seasonal food availability and micronutrient deficiencies – particularly vitamins A and C, iron and folate. The portfolios combine locally available and culturally acceptable food tree species that can be harvested consecutively to provide year-round nutritious foods.

Researchers identified specific food-insecure periods and nutrient gaps in diets through surveys and discussions with farmers. The portfolio approach can be adapted to different locations with diverse agro-ecological conditions, as well as to variations in species’ suitability, fruit-tree phenology and farmers’ preferences.

Trees that are a source of edible fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and oils have traditionally been used to complement and diversify staple-based diets. When integrated into agroforestry systems, they can contribute substantially to food and nutrition security for smallholders – possibly for generations.

In East Africa, the Food Trees project, funded by the European Union, IFAD and GIZ, co-developed tailored ‘food tree portfolios’ with farmers to address the challenges of seasonal food availability and micronutrient deficiencies – particularly vitamins A and C, iron and folate. The portfolios combine locally available and culturally acceptable food tree species that can be harvested consecutively to provide year-round nutritious foods.

Researchers identified specific food-insecure periods and nutrient gaps in diets through surveys and discussions with farmers. The portfolio approach can be adapted to different locations with diverse agro-ecological conditions, as well as to variations in species’ suitability, fruit-tree phenology and farmers’ preferences.

Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s leading producer of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.), with 800,000 smallholders producing nearly 40% of the world’s supply of ‘brown gold’ on about 2 million hectares of land. But many of these communities are living below the poverty line, struggling as their ageing orchards face crop disease outbreaks, yielding less and less cacao fruit. Over decades, a lack of improved germplasm and inputs such as fertilizer have resulted in degraded cocoa landscapes.

With support from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Mars, Inc., the Vision for Change (V4C) project is helping to revitalize the country’s cocoa sector through a combination of agricultural support and community development.

In 2020, an analysis of the factors that influence whether farmers introduce new tree species on their cocoa farms found that the number of new species rose with farmers’ tree planting experience and with how much they expected to benefit from the trees. Farmers mainly selected species that provide shade for cocoa or that yield fruit or other valuable products. When clearing land for cocoa production, farmers spared timber and indigenous and exotic fruit and nut species. This suggests that increasing the number of exotic fruit tree species could help diversify incomes and reduce food and nutritional insecurity in cocoa-producing zones.

V4C continues to search for solutions to cocoa swollen shoot disease (CSSD), which is devastating thousands of hectares of cocoa fields. Without any resistant varieties of cocoa or methods to treat CSSD, farmers are in despair. CIFOR-ICRAF studied on-farm rehabilitation approaches using improved hybrid varieties and elite clones, and examined the potential of biological control and biopesticides to manage mealybugs – the insects that transmit the disease – with promising results.

National and regional timber markets are booming in Central Africa, but since most local demand is met by the informal logging sector, producers lack the incentives to become more sustainable and profitable – and governments are missing out on revenues.

A new project funded by the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM), PROFEAAC takes an integrated approach to the formalization of artisanal logging in Cameroon and the DRC by linking the sustainable management of wood resources to the promotion of demand for legal sawnwood in private and public markets.

In other research, CIFOR-ICRAF published an analysis on the negotiation and monitoring of social clauses in the context of the WWF forest governance programme in the DRC.

And the new Central African Forests Observatory (OFAC) online platform serves as a single-entry point for researchers and decision makers to find information on policies and trends to inform decisions on the conservation and sustainable use of ecosystems.

In eastern Cameroon’s forest-savanna transition zone, refugees who fled civil war in the Central African Republic are living in camps and within host communities. As for internally displaced people from other regions of Cameroon, they have few livelihood options available. Collecting and trading firewood is critical to their food security.

When a large influx of people settle in a new area, the sharp surge in demand for land and natural resources, including wood, can lead to degradation and deforestation, leaving room for further conflicts in ecologically sensitive landscapes. Nutritious foods provided through humanitarian aid, such as cereals and beans, take a long time to cook. So when woodfuel is scarce, displaced families have no choice but to walk long distances or to reduce cooking time, eat fewer meals and stop boiling water – putting them at risk of malnutrition and disease.

With support from the EU, CIFOR-ICRAF and local partners have supported an integrated landscape-level intervention in the town of Garoua-Boulaï and the Gado-Badzéré refugee camp since 2018. They are engaging local communities and refugees in joint restoration initiatives, ranging from tree planting to participatory tree management. Activities include developing agroforestry systems with native food trees to increase local tree cover and support nutritious diets, and promoting tree species that can be used for fuel. Researchers have set up consultation forums to negotiate land-use norms and minimize conflict, and are promoting the use of energy-efficient stoves that use less wood.

To mitigate the environmental impacts of displacement in sub-Saharan Africa, CIFOR-ICRAF has established an Engagement Landscape to test, scale and implement this model and other alternatives. “These models can be adapted to each context as soon as displaced people begin arriving, to reduce the likelihood of rapid deforestation, degradation and social conflicts,” said scientist Abdon Awono, who leads activities in Cameroon.

Read more in our multimedia feature story.

In 2020, CIFOR-ICRAF continued to champion equity and equality across its research projects, including several that focus specifically on issues facing women in forest landscapes and agroforestry. Highlights include:

• research on gender-transformative approaches to women’s land rights in Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Bangladesh, The Gambia, Colombia and Ethiopia – supported by IFAD;

• an experimental study in northern Ghana on the effects of gender transformative approaches on smallholder households' resilience and capacity to sustainably engage in land restoration;

• a collaborative study across several CGIAR Research Programs on the ‘feminization of agriculture’, exploring the gendered impacts of migration on small-scale farming in Vietnam and Kenya;

• a guide to promote reflexive and adaptive learning processes in multistakeholder forums for gender-transformational change – supported by RRI;

• ongoing research into identifying and addressing gendered vulnerabilities under climate change in the shea value chain in Burkina Faso and Ghana – supported by IDRC.

Gender experts also continued their work on integrating gender into the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework through engaging in a virtual expert workshop hosted by CBD, UN Women and UN Environment, and developing targeted submissions to inform the CBD Gender Plan of Action and the post-2020 monitoring framework.

In 2020, FTA put in place a proactive management plan to adapt its plan of work and maximize delivery despite the Covid-19 context. Flagships 1 and 2 (FP1-2) initiated Transformative Partnership Platforms respectively on Transforming the Quality of Tree Planting (TQTP) and on Agroecological Approaches to Building Resilience of Livelihoods and Landscapes. FP3 developed, with its partner Tropenbos, the Inclusive Method for Landscape Analysis of Financial Flows (IMLAFF), piloted in key landscapes in Indonesia, Ghana and Uganda. FP4 influenced the restoration discourse globally through its “from tree planting to tree growing” paradigm, which was adopted by The Gambia and contributed to a national agroforestry policy development process. FP5 initiated a biocircular economy stakeholder consultation process, paving the way for another Transformative Partnership Platform. FTA’s gender research informed multistakeholder low-emissions development workshops organized by the Governors’ Climate and Forest (GCF) Task Force and UNDP, covering 30 jurisdictions in Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Indonesia.

FTA’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Impact Assessment team documented FTA’s progress in addressing key global challenges for which FTA is expected to deliver development outcomes.

2020 also marked the organization of FTA’s decadal conference, gathering more than 520 participants, with 200 scientific outputs (conference). FTA strengthened collaborations with the International Regulatory Strategy Group (IRSG) and FAO on adaptation to climate change (e.g., international workshop on rubber and climate change, co-publication with FAO on forests and trees in National Adaptation Plans).

An independent review, commissioned by CGIAR outlined FTA’s “high scientific productivity and strong implementation performance”, and stated that the programme was “likely to make significant progress toward most planned end-of-program targets". The review also highlighted the “close collaboration between FTA partners, and between universities and research institutions”. According to the review, FTA’s “efficient governance, and the effective prioritization and management of resources resulted in a high level of programmatic value-added”.

FTA stood out of the 12 reviews of CRPs by ranking first in terms of collaboration and by being in the top 3 for policy innovations and progress against programmatic outcomes.

Events

In 2020, GLF ran two major digital events, which over 10,000 people attended and millions more engaged with online:

• GLF Bonn 2020: Food in the time of crises, the first environmental digital conference of its kind – with over 300 speakers, hundreds of organizations, 235,000 engagements on social media, 22,000 messages plus 2,500 articles exchanged among participants – highlighted the need for platforms like GLF to continue including the voices of diverse knowledge holders from every corner of the world.

• GLF Biodiversity: One World – One Health – reached tens of millions of people, spotlighted ecosystem restoration and contributed to the next global biodiversity roadmap, advancing the global drive to ‘build back better’ with a set of seven policy recommendations.

UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration – the GLF has been named an official core partner in preparation for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 2021–2030.

Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration (FOLUR) Impact Program – contributing to strategic knowledge management and communications in this World Bank-led platform.

Youth in Landscapes – engaging 60,000+ youth in landscape restoration. This year the initiative launched the Restoration Stewards programme, which provides funding and mentoring for six youth-led restoration projects in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Learning – developing professional courses on the free online learning platform Landscape Academy (on GLF’s five themes) with 18,000+ learners so far.

GLFx – building a global community, GLFx, to enable and accelerate action towards more sustainable landscapes.

Sustainable finance – partnering with the Government of Luxembourg to mainstream sustainable finance at the GLF Luxembourg Investment Cases event.

Leveraging science to help businesses reach their climate and biodiversity goals

Resilient Landscapes is an innovative CIFOR-ICRAF venture, which aims to leverage science and research in scaling up investments in nature-based solutions to tackle climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and land degradation. It promotes strategic public-private partnerships through joint project design, benefit sharing and robust performance metrics generating financial, social and natural capital dividends for investors and businesses.

Resilient Landscapes’ mission is to scale up investments in nature-based solutions across landscapes and commodity supply chains by promoting science-based business cases; mobilizing financial investments; facilitating public-private partnerships; and ensuring environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance.

The initiative delivers a unique range of products, services and relationships developed through evidence-based analysis and design. It does this in collaboration with different public, private and civil society actors through contractual or partnership agreements across multiple scales. Resilient Landscapes assesses projects through five interconnected criteria: Technical Feasibility, Financial Viability, Operational Deliverability, Social/Political Acceptability and Environmental Sustainability.

Resilient Landscapes leverages CIFOR-ICRAF’s long-established partnerships with governments, donors, multilateral institutions, academia, NGOs, local communities, farmers, and youth and women’s groups.