Strengthening REDD+ implementation in Africa: capitalizing on lessons learned for an evolving environment - a UN-REDD AFF partnership

The Paris Agreement commits countries to limiting global temperature rise to well below 2°C, with efforts toward 1.5°C. Yet climate change is already impacting agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and related ecosystem services, particularly in Africa, where extreme weather events threaten livelihoods, food security, and stability—potentially pushing an additional 35–122 million people into poverty by 2030.

Forests are central to Africa's climate resilience. The Congo Basin, the world's second-largest tropical rainforest, plays a critical role in mitigation, adaptation, and biodiversity conservation. However, deforestation remains alarmingly high, with the Democratic Republic of Congo alone losing nearly 500,000 hectares of primary forest in 2021.

This project supports African countries in meeting their REDD+ forest emission reduction commitments, contributing to the UN-REDD goal of reducing 1 GtCO₂eq annually by 2025. Achieving the Paris goals requires urgent transformation of the AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use) sector and scaling up of forest financing, given forests' estimated mitigation potential of 4.1–6.5 GtCO₂e by 2030.

• REDD+ practitioners capacitated through access to tailored UN-REDD and AFF expertise addressing African priorities
• Decision-makers better informed on REDD+ and equipped with tools for policy integration across sectors
• Strengthened digital capacity development and knowledge management infrastructure for AFF and UN-REDD, with emphasis on low-bandwidth regions

• Paris Agreement
• African Union Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy 2022–2032
• AU Sustainable Forest Management Framework 2020–2030