Deforestation prevention with land-use monitoring and valuation in Cote d'Ivoire The project’s aim is to alleviate two key development
problems in Côte d’Ivoire: rural poverty, which
afflicts more than half of the rural population; and
deforestation for economic development, which has
led to the loss of 80% of the country’s natural forests.
It will contribute to efforts to reduce poverty and protect
forests by developing tools that help policy-makers
preserve and expand forests to the greatest benefits
of rural communities, and to integrate relatively
unproductive smallholders into more valuable
global supply chains. Three tools have been
created:
• Land use inventory that classifies and differentiates
physical surface cover types.
• Natural capital valuation framework that informs
national reforestation and forest protection
strategies, and supports the extension of
sustainable supply chains. This will integrate
the land-use inventory with other economic
information on the value of production and
eco-systems services to map the value of land
under different uses, recorded in a natural
capital accounting balance sheet.
• Forest disturbance early warning system to tighten
enforcement of land-use rules.
These will drive two key outcomes: improved
monitoring and enforcement efforts that prevent
forest loss and prioritise afforestation; and better
targeted support to local economic development
and sustainable supply chains through Payment
for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes.
All three tools represent substantial improvements
upon what is currently available, but the real benefit
of the project lies in their combination and close
integration into policy and regulatory activity. The
tools initially covered an area in the south west of
Côte d’Ivoire covered by the Emissions Reduction
Programme (ERP) initiative. The ERP region was
chosen as it contains much of the country’s
remaining natural forest and is the focus of the
development of sustainable supply chains and PES
schemes in the country. The project has now been
extended to cover the whole country. Using publicly available Earth Observation imagery, Vivid aim to create land-use tracking and deforestation warning systems for the Ivory Coast. This will improve monitoring to help and inform enforcement efforts, better target support to local economic development and sustainable supply chains through payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes. Overall this will prevent forest loss and prioritise afforestation.