The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) of India officially launched the “Forest-PLUS 2.0: forests for water and prosperity” program at an event in New Delhi on September 25, 2019.
Under the joint program, USAID will provide technical assistance to MoEFCC to improve management of forested landscapes in the states of Bihar, Kerala, and Telangana.
The program will focus on developing tools and techniques to strengthen ecosystem-based management and the inclusion of ecosystem services in forest landscape management, and to enhance the inclusive economic opportunities that emerge from improved landscape management.
Forest-PLUS 2.0, the second set of pilot projects, is meant to enhance sustainable forest landscape management after Forest-PLUS completed its five years in 2017.
The programme’s first set focused on capacity building to help India participate in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). It included four pilot projects in Sikkim, Rampur, Shivamogga and Hoshangabad.
Launched in December 2018, this program will improve the management of targeted forest landscapes in three states in India to enhance ecosystem services and increase economic opportunities, building on the success of Forest-PLUS 1.0 (2012–2017):
- Developing Tools for Managing Forests for Multiple Services: Forest-PLUS 2.0 will help respond to increasing recognition of the need to manage forested watersheds to enhance water flow and quality, and improve the livelihood opportunities and resilience of forest-dependent communities. The project will develop forestry management tools to enhance the flow of ecosystem services (water, in particular) and also develop model forest management plans based on an established ecosystem approach.
- Market-Based Instruments for Leveraging Finance: The program will develop tools to better monitor and value ecosystem services, and will also demonstrate market-based mechanisms for efficient delivery of these services. For example, a municipality or industry would make payments to upstream forest communities for using water flowing down from the forests because of improved forest management.
- Unlocking Economic Opportunities with Conservation: USAID will focus on modeling and setting up conservation enterprises to provide viable economic opportunities to forest-dependent people (rather than subsistence-scale livelihoods) and will leverage considerable investment by the private sector.
