The East African region is undeniably a critically important landscape as
the mountains, savannahs and forests of Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique ,
Tanzania, and Uganda support ecological and economic functions for people
and the several thousand plant and animal species endemic to the region.
WWF Tanzania, through the East Africa Regional Forest Programme (EARFP),
has therefore adopted an integrated, transboundary approach in its Country
Strategic Plan I & II to consider – at a regional scale – conservation and
climate change agendas and drivers as they relate to the livelihoods of local,
forest-dependent communities in these countries and their respective national
economic growth and development.
 
The EARFP was built on the foundation of WWF’s Coastal East Africa
Initiative’s (CEAI) Sustainable Forests Strategy to maintain regional
coordination and collaboration, scale-up regional interventions, maximize
influence to national governments and pursue WWF’s vision of nature and
people co-existing for the benefit of one another. While the CEAI’s Forest
Strategy concentrated its regional efforts in Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique,
the EARFP’s Strategy (2016 – 2020) extended its scope to include Uganda and
Madagascar in order to address illegal trade in timber and embrace regional
collaboration among countries to improve forest governance.
 
The transformative results and impacts of the EARFP programme have been
exemplary and, through this report, we are pleased to shine a light on some
of the programme’s achievements and lessons learnt over the past 5 years,
through adaptive, collaborative and committed efforts.