INVESTING IN TREES AND LANDSCAPE ... - PROFOR

educe pressures on forests for agricultural expansion and reduce the degradation of additional
land. We need to think about returns on investment because the supply of finance is not endless.
Africa is not a preferred investment destination, and forestry will compete with whole range of other
investments. Chipeta argued that people will make indirect investments in landscape restoration
while targeting a product they can sell directly. For example investors will invest in trees as windbreak
to protect their tea plantation. They may benefit later from the trees as a source of energy and
income, but their objective was related to protecting their investment in tea production rather than
in forestry.
Rather than relying solely on private incentives, private sector resources could be tapped through
legislation/taxation to fund public programs (consider, for example, water taxes that could create a
fund for watershed management). Laws such as these can create opportunities for investment. If
we insist on direct investment, however, there needs to be a clear financial return: trees landscaped
into agricultural plantations (coffee, tea), fruit trees, and timber to replace block forests that are
fast disappearing. In the late 1980s, there were fuel production nurseries. Is there a way to revive
interest in growing fuel for African cities? We should enforce charcoal regulations to create a formal
market for the single biggest product coming out of African forests.
FRANK MSAFIRI suggested looking for investment opportunities in drylands. Kenya is 80 percent arid
and semi-arid lands. The medium to high potential areas (where it rains the most) are saturated
with trees already, and farm sizes are minuscule there. Land is more available and affordable in
dry areas. Msafiri also suggested that communities may be able to generate income from nursery
activities to supply government programs—rather than investing in degraded areas themselves—and
that encouraging regeneration is a better choice than tree planting in water-deficient areas. Plants
introduced to restore areas of Kenya in the past were poorly suited for supporting livestock. We don’t
need restoration but natural regeneration programs in which communities are involved and that are
supported by investments in marketing infrastructure. Managing livestock movements may be a
better investment than restoring land.
GODWIN KOWERO highlighted the political roots of the current situation. Until 2000, agricultural
policies in Sub-Saharan Africa were not supportive of agricultural investment at the level of the farm.
There was too much emphasis on crops for foreign exchange and not enough support for farmers to
become investors. Global institutions have failed to really reach farmers. Perhaps there has been too
much investment on the soft side (workshops, processes, etc.) and not enough hard investment.
Likewise, solutions to land degradation require secure land tenure to attract investment. Finally, we
need to invest in water harvesting technology and spread knowledge of what to plant in dry areas if
we expect investors to take up the challenge of farming and growing trees in arid areas.
That said, governments and individuals have begun to understand the connections among tree
cover, healthy watersheds, and water for crops. Many African communities are aware and willing to
preserve the environment by increasing tree cover.
LARS LAESTADIUS said that the extent of the need for landscape restoration and climate change
measures is starting to create scale in and of itself. There are more than 400 million hectares in
Africa that could be restored. (NB: A later estimate increased that number to 715 million hectares.)
Climate change is also creating mounting pressures on politicians to be seen as doing something
sizable on the mitigation side. On the adaptation side, nature-based solutions to restore coastal
118 INVESTING IN TREES AND LANDSCAPE RESTORATION IN AFRICA