Zambia – Community Forest Program (CFP)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has commissioned a team under the Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) Task Order to conduct an endline evaluation for the USAID/Zambia Community Forest Program (CFP) in 2023-2024. The CFP was designed to support the Government of the Republic of Zambia’s (GRZ) Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) strategy by establishing the largest REDD+ program to date in Zambia. The CFP aimed to establish REDD+ project areas across a minimum of 700,000 hectares within the Zambezi and Luangwa Valley ecosystems, and in so doing, incentivize better forest management on a total of up to two million hectares, involving up to 10,000 households (BCP 2017 Annual Report).

The CFP sought to reduce emissions from deforestation through participatory natural resource management of globally biodiverse and significantly forested landscapes. To accomplish this, the CFP included a full suite of activities to help develop, manage, and maintain a comprehensive community forest management and REDD+ project. Specifically, the CFP included components in stakeholder consultations, livelihood improvements, forest management, and engagement with the Government. This project is supported by a number of PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows.