With forest landscape restoration, we’ve seen agricultural yields rise—Biruta tells world summit

{Ten African countries have committed to restore 31 million hectares of degraded and deforested land, under a new push to make 100 million hectares productive again by 2030. The AFR100 scheme, launched on Sunday in Paris, will be backed by $1 billion from the World Bank and additional funds from Germany, as well as $545 million in private-sector investment.}

“Restoring our landscapes brings prosperity, security and opportunity,” said Rwanda’s Minister of Natural Resources Vincent Biruta.

“With forest landscape restoration, we’ve seen agricultural yields rise and farmers in our rural communities diversify their livelihoods and improve their well-being,” he added in a statement.

The countries taking part so far are Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Togo and Uganda.

“If the Congo Basin is not well managed, the land will become degraded and turn into grassland, and then the desert will take over the whole of Africa,” Henry Djombo, Republic of Congo’s forest economy minister, told the launch of the initiative in Paris.

The new land restoration programme builds on national commitments made by African countries for a U.N. deal to tackle climate change, due to be agreed in the French capital next week.

So far, 13 of the climate action plans submitted by African governments include restoration, conservation of standing forests or agriculture that adapts to climate shifts and limits greenhouse gas emissions.

Vision 2020 recognizes that the major problem in the field of environmental protection in Rwanda is the imbalance between the population and the natural resources. This leads to alarming degradation observed through massive deforestation, the depletion of bio-diversity, erosion and landslides, pollution of waterways and the degradation of fragile ecosystems. As remedial measures, Vision 2020 sets the target for the forest cover to reach 30% of the national land area by year 2020 and the protection rate against erosion to rise from 20% in 2000 to 90% by 2020.

The Rwanda‘s EDPRS II (2012-2017) prioritizes Forestry as the bedrock of National Economy where it recognizes its contribution of about 13% to GDP and recommends to increase that to 15% by 2017. The EDPRS II supports increasing forest cover to reach 30% by 2018; it further proposes the sustainable management of forest biodiversity and critical ecosystems through protection and maintenance of 10.25% of the land area.