Restoration approaches:
- Assisted Natural Regeneration
- conservation
- agroforestry
Goals:
Mitigate climate change through avoided deforestation and the removal of GHGs by restoring degraded miombo.
Improve ecological services, re-establish wildlife habitats and enhance the biodiversity index, linking two protected areas.
Sustainably improve the wellbeing of communities through job creation, improving sustainable forest-based livelihoods, green economic development opportunities and community development through carbon revenue sharing.
Build capacity for good governance of forests and improve coherence of forest management between stakeholders by bringing them together behind one conservation-based vision, and embed it in district development planning.
Why is intervention needed?
There’s a lot of forest cover, but also a lot of people now living in the area, with a high rate of deforestation particularly since 2012. Forest clearance is carried out for small-scale agriculture, unsustainable harvesting of timber and non-timber forest products, man-made late dry season fires, and following land privatization for commercial agriculture. Poverty rates are high, and communities are dependent on low productivity shifting cultivation (chitemene) and the often unsustainable collection of forest resources: bushmeat, caterpillars, fruits, timber and fuelwood.
Biodiversity
There is evidence for historic wildlife movement in the area, which is home to multiple endemic species of flora and fauna, and recent evidence of large carnivores. The project will protect and enhance forest habitats, linking two protected areas of conservation importance: Lavushimanda and South Luangwa National Parks. This will entail a combination of improved forest management, law enforcement, biodiversity monitoring and awareness campaigns to limit risks of human-wildlife conflict as wildlife returns to the area.
Livelihood development
To improve the well-being of local communities, the project’s green economy focus will include market systems development for forest-friendly products including natural juices, sustainable caterpillars and dried mushrooms. It will provide training in alternative livelihoods and climate-smart agricultural value chains, and the local knowledge of community forest management groups will be supplemented with scientific best practice, skills and knowledge to effectively manage their natural resources for future generations.