Africa

In 2014 SilvaCarbon began providing bilateral support to Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo (ROC), and Cameroon with the goal of complementing existing support from the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE). A principle CARPE objective is to strengthen capacities to monitor forest cover change, GHG emissions, and biodiversity.

The Central African Congo Basin is the second-largest humid tropical forest in the world and is widely recognized as a global priority for forest and carbon conservation and management. A number of Congo Basin countries have committed to reducing forest loss and associated emissions and are working with different international partners to meet those commitments. National stakeholders in the region have sought technical support in developing cost-effective forest and landscape monitoring approaches and systems that are suited to the Congo Basin’s large, dense, and often inaccessible forests.

SilvaCarbon complements other donor efforts in the region by working with DRC, ROC, and Cameroon to address specific forest monitoring needs and gaps. This ranges from building foundational capacities for REDD+, developing tailored forest mapping methodologies, and incorporating different forest types such as carbon-rich wetland forests into existing forest inventory frameworks. In all three countries, SilvaCarbon leverages the presence of in-country coordinators to ensure relevancy of programming and support activity implementation.