Climate Smart Forest Economy Program (CSFEP)

The Climate Smart Forest Economy Program (CSFEP) partners with communities, small businesses, governments, and actors in the enabling ecosystem to create local coalitions that redesign forest-related value chains for climate, biodiversity, and prosperity. It envisions a different future for forest economies: one that restores, not depletes, natural resources; reduces, not increases, emissions from value chains; and safeguards, not exploits, interests of smallholder and forest-dwelling communities (Clay, K. and Cooper, L.) A coalition of forest and climate advocates launched CSFEP in 2020 to build an alliance of organizations committed to a new economic model: one that used commercial industries to drive meaningful investments in forests and to support forest health. Our global network of people, organizations, and coalitions works to accelerate transitions to healthy forest economies worldwide by: • Working in regions around the world to build local climate smart forest economies. Together with coalitions of small business owners, community members, and others we imagine what a local climate smart forest economy could look like in that region. Then we capitalize on identified opportunities—or remove identified barriers—to realize one. Each region is unique, so building forest economies that respond to local contexts is critical to ensuring maximum benefits to climate, biodiversity, and prosperity. • Developing a common, global set of principles, practices, tools, and standards for climate smart forest economies, based on learnings from coalition activities as well as scientific and traditional knowledge. We use the best insights from science, traditional knowledge, and practice to develop toolkits, case studies, resource banks and other guidance to ensure a diverse set of global actors are committed to a common vision for a climate-smart forest economy, have a common understanding of what a climate smart forest economy is, and have tools needed to achieve one.