Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) Programme

Project title: Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) Programme

Project background:

Building on the work of the National Forest Programme (NFP) and the Growing Forest Partnership (GFP), a new global initiative called the Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) is being implemented jointly by IUCN, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the World Bank. Funded through multiple agencies, FFF will be executed in 36 countries across the world. Currently, FFF is being implemented in ten countries within Africa, Asia and Latin America.

FFF promotes cross-sectoral coordination and enhances the organisation and capacity of local people for forest and farm community’s advocacy, livelihoods, and sustainable landscape management. The purpose of the programme is to increase the household income of smallholder, women, local community and indigenous peoples groups by improving the management of forest and farm resources, while also strengthening their capacity in policy engagement. The long-term goal of the project is to contribute to improving food security and livelihoods of the local people. In Nepal, IUCN is coordinating the FFF programme at the national level and Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN) and Federation of Nepal Cottage and Small Industries (FNCSI) is coordinating this programme at the district and local level.

Objectives of the project: The programme is aimed at improving livelihoods and decision-making related to forest and farm landscapes of smallholders, local communities and Indigenous peoples groups. Specifically, the objectives are:

• Strengthen smallholder, women, community and Indigenous peoples’ capacity in business, livelihood activities and policy engagement

• Catalyse multi-sectorial stakeholder policy platforms with governments at local and national levels

• Link local voices and learning to global processes through communications and information dissemination

Expected Outputs: The FFF programme has three components, namely policy advocacy, business development and promotion of a cross-sectoral platform. The expected major outcomes of the programme are as follows:

• Establishing and strengthening a system of multi-stakeholder policy dialogue

• Enhancing resource accessing capacity of producer organizations

• Strengthening the service delivery capacity of service providers

• Forming and strengthening the cross-sectoral platform

• Increasing income from forest and farm products

Donors:

Government of Finland; Government of Germany; Government of Sweden; Government of the United States; and Agricord

AFFONs engagement : AFFON since its inception in 2015, has been working to secure the rights of the family forest farmers and their economic transformation through the sustainable management of the forest they own.

Under FFF program, AFFON has been working to improve the livelihood of the family forest farmers (of Bharbhanjyang and Vanu VDC) of Tanahu district through adoption of forest farm enterprises. Focusing on amrisho (broom grass) cultivation in the forested as well as barren lands of the family forest farmers, the activities are designed so as to enhance the production capacity of the forest farmers from just meeting the household level need to commercial farming, promote business cultures among family forest farmers, improve marketing skills as well as develops market linkages & coordination, develop capacity of AFFON members and improve communication with the line agencies.

In this regard AFFON has already organized training to family forest owners on amriso cultivation & production, advocacy and leadership development training to AFFON members, multi-stakeholder dialogue to micro-analyze the existing policy hurdles for forest based enterprises.

Photo features