The Agroforestry Technical Assistance Facility (ATAF) has achieved first close of USD 2.8 million today for poverty alleviation and climate change resilience.
The Agroforestry Technical Assistance Facility (ATAF) has achieved a first closing of USD 2.8 million. Main contributors are the French Facility for Global Environment (FFEM), the African Development Bank (via the Fund for African Private Sector Assistance - FAPA) and the Investment and Support Fund for Businesses in Africa (FISEA - AFD Group). The Dutch Development Bank (FMO) is supporting a first project in Nicaragua through its Capacity Development Program. USAID issupporting land tenure technical assistance as a part of its Responsible Land-Based Investment Pilot.
ATAF is a grant based mechanism parallel to the investments of the Moringa Fund. It is managed by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC).
ATAF is a unique and innovative tool aimed at adapting agricultural value chains to climate change, increasing farmers’ resilience and promoting agroforestry as a sustainable way of land use. ATAF is a Public and Private Partnership with the Moringa Fund. It provides technical assistance with the goal to amplify and upscale environmental and social positive impacts triggered through Moringa investments.
Moringa is the first and only investment vehicle specifically dedicated to promote agroforestry as a catalyst for creating shared value among integrated value chains. Investing into agroforestry is an opportunity to link agriculture and forestry policies, and to apply an inclusive land management considered to be a promising solution for climate change adaptation and mitigation (e.g. through soil quality improvement, carbon sequestration, water conservation, or biodiversity protection). This holistic approach can be a new way of financing landscapes: bringing public and private actors together for inclusive value chains and triple bottom returns. ATAF will support the Moringa Fund in its innovative and ransversal approach. It will especially accommodate the sensitivity of agroforestry to social and environmental effects of investments.
ATAF will contribute to remove the barriers to the development of viable agroforestry systems and the inclusion of smallholders in pioneering outgrower schemes. By providing farmers with access to training, by supporting innovative research and development programs and by assisting commercial initiatives, ATAF will create an enabling environment to increase the resilience of farmers and landscapes in Latin America and Sub- Saharan Africa. The first ATAF Committee meeting was held in Paris on 4 November. During this meeting two Technical Assistance projects were approved.
In Nicaragua, the Matagalpa Agroforest Resilient Landscape program (MATRICE) will foster entrepreneurial mind-set of smallholders and support the establishment of a coffee outgrower scheme around Cafetalera Nicafrance, in which Moringa and Oikocredit invested in 2015. Approximately 20,000 trees will be planted to mitigate climate change and 250,000 disease resistant coffee seedlings will be distributed to smallholders who are affected by coffee leaf rust and climate-related issues (jointly responsible for a 40% decline of the Nicaraguan coffee production). It will also pursue innovative and collaborative Public & Private Partnerships for the development of programs that will help the country to meet it's 2.8 million hectare Landscape Restoration objectives set within the 20x20 Initiative of the World Resources
Institute.
In Belize, the Sustainable Coconut Residues project (SCR) will aim at designing viable solutions to process and market coconut by-products and waste of the Moringa investee TexBel and its connected outgrowers. The generated energy and marketed products such as handicrafts will lead to positive social impacts for the communities surrounding TexBel and to a positive environmental impact through a reduction of the carbon imprint of the firm.
