Partnerships for Forests

Organizational profile: Partnerships for Forests is funded by the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), as part of a commitment to help countries mitigate and adapt to climate change through the Investments in Forests and Sustainable Land Use programme. Partnerships for Forests provides a combination of grants and technical assistance to help selected partnerships move towards commercial scale up—from an idea or concept through to full proposal, business plan, pilot and finally commercial scale-up. Activities will not be funded beyond the project end-date of December 2023.

Partnerships for Forest’s main focus is supporting the development of Forest Partnerships. These are partnerships between private sector companies, public sector actors and people—the communities that depend on forests for their livelihoods—that catalyse investment in forests and sustainable land use. A partnership could, for example, be a large-scale deal between government, smallholders and private sector companies that reforests degraded land to mixed forest and generates benefits for all partners. Or it could aim to transform a whole commodity sector through the widespread implementation of commercially viable but sustainable practices. Ideas for these partnerships exist, but they often face challenges to commercial scale up.

Financing Instrument: Grants, Technical Assistance

Project scale: Grants provided will normally range from £10,000 to £1 million for Forest Partnerships. Applicants should provide co-financing of at least 25%.

Recipient countries/regions/country groups: Partnerships for Forests works across West and Central Africa, East Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

Recipient categories: NGOs/NPOs, Businesses, Universities, Co-operative/trade association, Civil society or community-based organisation

Eligibility Criteria:

Examples for an early stage partnership:

Technical assistance for early-stage partnerships could include advising on the business case, improving the financial model, supporting organisational design, providing access to data on commodities and identifying and mitigating risks.

Grants for early-stage partnerships could include support for setting up organizations and capacity building, introducing high standards for community consultation or social and environmental impact assessments, and external advisors to facilitate deals between partners.

Examples for a later stage partnership:

Technical assistance for later stage partnerships could include advising on strategy, developing the business case for commercial scale-up and making introductions to potential investors.

Grants for partnerships that have already piloted could include grants for expert advice and problem-solving teams in order to achieve commercial scale-up, identifying new locations for growth, new monitoring and reporting tools, and new approaches to the management of social and environmental impact.

Application guidelines:  Partnerships for Forests is always looking for new ideas for partnerships that can catalyse investment in forests and sustainable land use. If you have an idea for a Forest Partnership, enabling conditions project or a demand-side project, please send it through the proposal form available at the website of the Partnerships for forests.