PROGREEN’s global program aims to catalyze innovative and novel approaches to advance integrated landscape management. The global program engages with global discourse, addressing a range of international, regional, and national goals and commitments that countries are working toward, including the Global Biodiversity Framework; provides flexibility to respond to changing conditions, such as climate-induced threats like wildfires; and contributes to other emerging themes in landscapes discourse, like aquaculture.
Biodiversity
PROGREEN supports countries in advancing their biodiversity targets through the development of indicators and tools, in alignment with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Montreal-Kunming Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).
For example, to strengthen the impact of nature-based tourism activities and operations across country programs, PROGREEN co-financed the development of the LEWIE-lite methodology, along with the Global Wildlife Fund and PROBLUE, to facilitate investment in protected area tourism. The tool was piloted in four protected areas across Uganda and Madagascar, helping ministries understand the value and benefits of nature-based tourism.
Climate Resilience
Changes in climate across countries are deeply intertwined with landscape health. The Global Program invests in ecosystem assessment tools to ensure landscape interventions maximize their impact. Activities under this workstream support countries to meet multiple global environmental and climate targets, including the Bonn Challenge, and Nationally Determined Contributions under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
One of PROGREEN’s signature initiatives, the Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Landscape Assessment (BELA) Initiative was designed to promote the uptake of ecosystem service approaches to landscape management. By integrating considerations for nature across planning, the program enhanced the effectiveness and long-term sustainability of investments in biodiversity conservation, agriculture, water resources, forestry, nature-based tourism, and infrastructure in eleven countries.
Governance
Governance is central to the PROGREEN portfolio as a fundamental precursor to successful landscape management. Issues related to the institutional and policy landscape within countries often pose a challenge to the effective delivery of interventions in sustainable forest management. To systemically address these challenges, PROGREEN focuses on developing knowledge and tools for promoting sound governance.
For example, the Landscape Governance Assessment Tool (LGAT) is a diagnostic tool for assessing governance gaps and strengthening planning and decision-making. Following successful pilots in Argentina, Uzbekistan, and Ghana, in FY24, the team expanded the use of the tool to new contexts, including its application for climate finance in Liberia.
Gender and Inclusion
Across landscape activities, the inclusion of women and other minority groups has been an ongoing priority for PROGREEN. Measures to increase gender equity throughout the design, planning, and implementation of programs feature prominently as a cross-cutting issue. Overall, activities seek to increase recognition and understanding of how empowering women and Indigenous Peoples contributes towards environmental targets.
The Gender Certification Capacity for Landscape Projects funded by PROGREEN aims to develop a crediting system to measure women’s leadership and quantifying their contributions within country programs. In FY24, the team started to pilot the program and expanded work within the Community Forest Program in Nepal and workshops in Mexico.
Nature Finance
Resource mobilization is often a roadblock for increased action in landscape restoration and management. To reduce barriers for private sector investment in nature, PROGREEN has expanded activities that seek to create innovative mechanisms for enhanced participation and engagement across the sector.
As part of its ‘green finance’ agenda, PROGREEN finances the development of sovereign sustainability-linked bonds as an asset class to drive capital towards the achievement of global sustainability goals. In FY24, the Development Bank of Rwanda (BRD) was the first national development bank to issue sustainability linked bonds, reinforcing the credibility of the bonds as an asset class.