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Resilient Landscapes

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.

Landscape restoration and bioenergy production for local economic growth in Serbia

Demand for woody biomass in Serbia and the Balkans has been growing exponentially. This project focuses on supply deals with large buyers to stabilize the local biomass market and ensure higher revenue for small- and large-scale growers. It is anticipated that this will result in greater investments along the supply chain.

CIFOR-ICRAF and E3I, an experienced and locally connected expert on sustainable energy, have jointly developed a project that meets concrete local business demands and delivers positive socio-environmental impacts for the region. Leveraging CIFOR-ICRAF’s science, Resilient Landscapes is working to secure impact investment and ensure a high level of project performance in terms of generating revenues and meeting environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance.

Building
forward better

ANNUAL REPORT 2020

In 2020 – a year like no other – CIFOR-ICRAF continued to deliver the world’s best science on forests and trees in agricultural landscapes, shifting the conversation online as the Covid-19 pandemic evolved.

This annual report features stories about expertise, dedication and perseverance. When people responded to the pandemic with calls to ban wild meat, CIFOR-ICRAF experts stepped forward with recent, highly relevant evidence in hand, highlighting the needs of communities who rely on wild game for nutrition. Other scientists forged ahead to deliver compelling research findings on improved tree seed and restoration work in Ethiopia, agroforestry in Southeast Asia, and a new model for sustainable use of woodfuel in refugee camps – among many other topics.

CIFOR-ICRAF continued to chart its path as one organization, with a new 10-year strategy that outlines game-changing solutions to five global challenges: deforestation and biodiversity loss, the climate crisis, unsustainable supply and value chains, the need to transform food systems, and extreme inequality for women, Indigenous Peoples and vulnerable rural communities.

Three new holistic approaches will deliver actionable solutions to these challenges: Transformative Partnership Platforms, Engagement Landscapes and Flagship Products. And the newly launched Resilient Landscapes aims to leverage the power of the private sector to spur greater investment in nature-based solutions.

The Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) held its first fully virtual conference in June and didn’t stop there, seeing unprecedented digital growth during the year. And the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA) marked its 10th science conference – also virtual – while continuing to demonstrate the power of partnership.