In order to ensure global food security and avert dangerous climate change, the world faces the pressing dual challenge of both protecting its remaining rainforests and enhancing food production in sustainable and resilient ways. Successfully achieving this would provide multiple co-benefits, including safeguarding the well-being and livelihoods of forests peoples; protecting the biodiversity and ecosystems provided by forests; and reducing rural poverty.
This report seeks to contribute to the achievement of this goal by summarising the findings of recent studies commissioned by the Prince’s Rainforests Project and conducted in key agricultural and forest regions of Brazil, Ghana and Indonesia. The purpose of the studies, carried out by regional experts, was to determine the incentives, enabling policies and financial mechanisms necessary in each of these regions in order to intensify agricultural production without causing further deforestation. The studies also describe potential pilot initiatives which – were they to be implemented as part of broader integrated national and regional policies designed to promote low-carbon development – could make a practical contribution to addressing this challenge in each country.
Three key “levers” of change were identified across the regions and commodities to this end: (i) the provision of upfront public finance, followed by low-interest loans, (ii) the establishment and enforcement of the correct enabling policy and regulatory frameworks; and (iii) the need for significant public investment in increasing the capacity of agricultural producers, and smallholders in particular.