This report, developed within the DigitAF project, provides guidance for designing agroforestry business plans that incorporate branding and certification strategies to increase the value of agroforestry products and services. Building on previous analyses of agroforestry value chains and certification approaches across Europe, the report emphasizes that effective business planning should extend beyond technical, environmental, and financial considerations to include marketing and market development. It examines different pathways for capturing additional value from agroforestry systems, including short value chains, diversification of revenue streams through environmental service markets and recreation opportunities, and the use of branding and certification schemes. The report highlights the importance of defining brand identity, developing a clear value proposition, understanding market positioning, and considering collective approaches to branding. It also reviews certification options relevant to agroforestry products, including organic labeling, geographical indications, animal welfare standards, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity enhancement schemes. The findings suggest that integrating agroforestry into existing certification frameworks may be more effective than creating dedicated agroforestry certification systems. The report provides practical recommendations for producers, policymakers, and value-chain stakeholders seeking to improve market recognition, profitability, and sustainability of agroforestry enterprises.
Tag: carbon market
Strengthening the role of local people in REDD+ in a post-FCPF world: The story of Indonesia and East Kalimantan
Key messages
- The level of knowledge on climate change and carbon trade is highly uneven with greater understanding among provincial government officials directly involved in the FCPF program and lowest among village community members who face the highest risk.
- The East Kalimantan JREDD+ was the first of its kind in Indonesia, but complicated procedures and additional conditions imposed during implementation, coupled with demands from the private sector for a share in the carbon trade, are driving a turn to nested projects.
- JREDD+ that focuses on nesting through accounting loses the purported advantages of jurisdictional approaches and puts substantial project risk back on communities.
Strengthening stakeholder capacities for equitable blue carbon mangrove: Mapping capacities and gaps in two pilot sites in Indonesia
Key messages
- Mangrove blue carbon presents opportunities for climate change mitigation, and other environmental and socioeconomic benefits for coastal communities, but capacity to engage effectively and fully in mangrove blue carbon financial investments is unevenly distributed across the blue carbon mangrove value chain.
- Although mangrove management capacities are increasingly present in Indonesia, gaps are evident in areas such as project development; measurement, reporting and verification (MRV); and engagement with carbon and non-carbon market mechanisms.
- Strengthening practical capacities alone is not sufficient: these must be supported by empowering governance arrangements and enabling institutions and be underpinned by strong foundational capacities. These are needed to ensure that stakeholders can move beyond project implementation roles towards sustained participation, leadership and innovation across the blue carbon value chain. In the Indonesian context, fragmented coordination, unclear distribution of mandates, and varying levels of capacity across sectors and government continue to be key barriers to effective and scalable blue carbon value chain implementation.
- Community groups play a central role in mangrove management, yet require stronger institutional recognition, clearer mandates and sustained capacity development support to participate effectively and fully in emerging blue carbon initiatives.
- Targeted, long-term and competency-based capacity development is needed to strengthen and develop stakeholder engagement; improve institutional readiness; and build trust and confidence among communities, government, private sectors and investors in Indonesia’s blue carbon initiatives and financing mechanisms.
Forest land deals, resistance, and legitimisation – a comparative analysis of discourse coalitions and silent actors in Cameroon and Malaysia
Forests and forestlands in the Global South have been claimed for a myriad of interconnected global interests since colonial times, for plantations, concessions for resource extraction and commodity production, and conservation. Resistance to these claims is expressed in discourse, contesting and clashing with often louder, more powerful, legitimations of resource extraction and production. Understanding who argues, how – and how powerfully – when plantations/concessions are resisted or legitimised will be important when trying to shape trajectories for more just futures in forest frontiers. We compare two cases: the establishment of a new oil palm plantation replacing forest in Kribi, Cameroon, and the establishment of a contract for carbon offsets to an international broker in Sabah, Malaysia. We analyse print media covering the individual cases, using Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) to identify involved actors, coalitions, and the discursive strategies at play. While our two cases show differences in who resists and supports large land deals and how, we identified three discursive strategies common to both studies: those resisting from below encounter limitations when trying to leverage transnational coalitions, while those advocating for large land deals employ delegitimisation and dismissal of critique, as well as silence and silencing as main discursive strategies.
Safeguards for Carbon Markets – Prioritizing Local Communities’ Tenure Rights
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) defines carbon markets as trading systems in which carbon credits are sold and bought. Companies or individuals can use carbon markets to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing carbon credits from entities that remove or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One tradable carbon credit equals one tonne of carbon dioxide or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas reduced, sequestered or avoided. When a credit is used to reduce, sequester, or avoid emissions, it becomes an offset and is no longer tradable.
Incentives and financing mechanisms for improved landscape management, biodiversity conservation, nature-based solutions and livelihood development
This study employed a multifaceted approach to evaluate existing incentives and provide financing mechanism recommendations for sustainable land management and biodiversity conservation in Rwanda. The approach used included a comprehensive literature review to gain a foundational understanding of the existing landscape; the administration of semi-structured questionnaires to 22 key actors; a stakeholder consultation workshop for district forest and natural resources officers from nine Congo-Nile Ridge (CNR) landscape districts; and focus group discussions with 15 sector forest officers and 21 lead farmers.
Synthesis report can be accessed: here