Across Africa, South East Asia, and Latin America, Partnerships for Forests (P4F) has been catalysing investments into forests and sustainable land use since 2016. The UK Aid-funded program, managed by Palladium and Systemiq, helps create market-ready public-private-community forest partnerships, has helped to bring more than four million hectares of land under sustainable management, and the team recently reached a major milestone: £1 billion of private investment mobilised and channelled into forests and sustainable land use.

“This represents a substantial and landmark achievement for a program of P4F’s size,” explains P4F Team Leader, Katie McCoy. “And it’s an extremely tangible result of P4F’s work to grow the value of forests, demonstrating that it is possible to mobilise significant private investment in this area."

“We and our partners have proven that these business models can work. We’re continuing to work on scaling and replicating these successes.”

The one billion pound figure is made up of private investment from non-public sources, public investment from multilateral or regional development banks and development finance institutions, and an increase in revenue driven by increased sales volume or increased sales price that is linked to deforestation-free or sustainable land use production and management practices. In addition, P4F tracks mobilised investment attributed to P4F support and investment raised outside of P4F.

“It’s worth noting that this figure has breadth, rather than just scale,” adds McCoy. “A huge range of projects has contributed to that one billion pounds, from all tropical countries in which we work, across the tropical forests belt, across a wide range of sectors, and from across the forest transition curve.”

“It represents the public sector, private sector, and community coming together in one of three ways: creating value from standing forests, engaging in agricultural produce-protect models, and from restoration and forest regrowth,” adds McCoy.

In addition to this directly mobilised private investment, the program has also mobilised commitments totalling £42.4m in match funding from its forest partnerships, of which £32m has been delivered and spent to date. Delivered match funding and direct private investment combined make up £1,044,741,802 of the private investment P4F has mobilised.

Forest partnerships, which represent much of P4F’s main focus, are partnerships between private sector companies, the public sector, and people – especially the communities that depend on forests for their livelihoods – that catalyse investments into forests and sustainable land use. While ideas for these partnerships exist, commercial scale-up is often a challenge. P4F provides a combination of grants and technical assistance to help selected partnerships move from an idea or concept through to full proposal, business plan, pilot, and finally to scale up commercially.

“We’re incredibly proud of the work that our team, our partners, communities, and actors from across the world have done to make this happen,” adds McCoy. “Our work continues, to scale and replicate these investments and ensure the future of our forests.”

For more, read 'Community Forestry Programs Provide Ecological and Economic Protection in Tanzania' or contact info@thepalladiumgroup.com.