USAID's Biodiversity Conservation and Forestry Programs, 2011 Report

About $85 million of the Agency's forestry efforts advanced biodiversity conservation as a key objective. Programs in forest restoration, agroforestry, and watershed conservation accounted for the remaining $18 million of forestry funding. USAID's FY 2010 funding for biodiversity and forestry activities grew to $213 million, with programs in more than 50 countries. Many activities worked to address the full range of threats in an ecologically-defined landscape, such as the 19-country SCAPES program, which improved habitat connectivity for over one million gazelle in Mongolia and 250,000 elephants in Southern Africa. Other activities leveraged the buying power and market reach of the private sector to address a single threat, such as illegal logging or unsustainable fishing, wherever it exists. Biodiversity programs in FY 2010 improved natural resource management over more than 70 million hectares in biologically significant areas, an area the size of California and Nevada combined. Two of USAID's largest forest conservation programs, in the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia, reduced or sequestered an estimated 8.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in FY 2010, the equivalent of taking 1.5 million cars off American roads for one year. In Kenya, USAID assistance helped 21,500 individuals from wildlife-rich areas earn income from a variety of enterprises, including ecotourism and associated small businesses. Agency support in FY 2010 leveraged more than $3 million in private sector and community investment, resulting in seven new conservancies and four eco-lodges. In Haiti, nearly one million trees were planted in FY 2010, most by 11,700 farmers who received support to plant eroding hillsides with perennial tree crops like mango, cacao, and coffee instead of annual crops of corn and beans. In Liberia, USAID advanced both local rights and national laws. Ten key regulations to implement Liberia's Community Rights Law with Respect to Forest Lands were drafted and vetted, drawing on pilot programs in two biologically diverse landscapes where four clans are gaining land tenure over community forests by agreeing to manage them sustainably. USAID completed initial support for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Wildlife Enforcement Network (ASEAN-WEN) and renewed this partnership in late 2010 through a new program: Asia's Regional Response to Endangered Species Trafficking (ARREST). Deforestation and forest degradation account for 14 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to the entire global transportation sector. Reducing emissions from forest loss is expected to slow climate change and allow people and ecosystems more time to adapt to rising sea levels, changing rainfall, and other predicted impacts. In FY 2010, several USAID programs generated indirect climate change mitigation benefits, and a suite of new Sustainable Landscapes programs were initiated.