The Challenge

• Transforming unsustainable land use practices to create sustainable and climate-resilient landscapes. Local stakeholders often lack the resources to improve the socio-economic and environmental impacts of their land use practices unless they can link to responsible agro-commodity value chains, which usually require them to adhere to external conditions. This situation traps them in practices that address the needs of value company shareholders but limit their ability to make adaptations that meet their own needs and expectations.
   
• Two major barriers in the financial transactions between local stakeholders and financial service to generate local economically viable initiatives. On the one hand, there is a lack of investible business cases. On the other hand, business case proponents face difficulties in meeting the Financial Service Providers’ requirements to reduce the perceived risks of investments in the (agro)forest(ry) sector.

Our Work

We enable larger capital flows to support frontier landscapes and strengthen smallholders to implement sustainable practices contributing to resilience, economic growth, and livelihood improvement. Our local stakeholders are Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, community-based organisations, cooperatives, smallholder Forest & Farm Producers and their organisations and Indigenous People and Local Communities. We work in:

• Strengthening Capabilities: Enhance the capacity of local stakeholders to earn a living income through improved practices and market access, as well as their financial literacy, including their capacity to construct bankable business case proposals.
   
• Financial Products Development: Collaborate with local, national, and international financial service providers to develop locally appropriate financial products and mechanisms that reduce the perceived risks associated with loans in this sector and make them more accessible to our local stakeholders.
   
• Knowledge management and sharing: We document successful cases of our local stakeholders, and share the experiences and lessons learned in national and international events with partners from the private, public and non-profit sectors.

Programmes & Collaborations

• Growing Resilient Landscapes with Forests and Trees
• ComPeat Project

Organisations we collaborate with for knowledge sharing:
AidEnvironment, CIFOR-ICRAF, Eco-agriculture Partners, FAO, FarmTree, IDH Invest, IUFRO-WFSE, Rabobank, Southpole Financial Access

 Contact

To learn more about our initiatives or to collaborate with us, please contact Bas Louman (bas.louman@tropenbos.org) or Juan Manuel Moya (juan.moya@tropenbos.org) from the Responsible Business and Finance team.