Reforestation
Africa's opportunity
Tropical forest restoration is the ultimate way to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Carbon removal from reforestation can be accurately measured and verified. Its potential scale is vast. Beyond the immense benefits of carbon storage, forest restoration also re-establishes biodiversity and secures communities.
Carbon removal opportunity 2020-50 by solution (gigatonnes of CO2)
Many of the world’s most significant and degraded rainforest regions are in Africa. Rainforest Builder works across the continent with communities and governments to restore formerly forested areas to their natural state.
We use a ‘land sparing’ approach – intensively restoring project areas to natural forest, while simultaneously helping increase agricultural yields on adjacent lands – enabling complex, biodiverse rainforest to coexist permanently alongside more productive agriculture.
All data was downloaded from the following sources and the figures were generated by Rainforest Builder
Ecoregions:
Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E. D., Burgess, N. D., Powell, G. V. N., Underwood, E. C., D'Amico, J. A., Itoua, I., Strand, H. E., Morrison, J. C., Loucks, C. J., Allnutt, T. F., Ricketts, T. H., Kura, Y., Lamoreux, J. F., Wettengel, W. W., Hedao, P., Kassem, K. R. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51(11):933-938.
Area (million km2): The terrestrial extent of the given ecoregion potentially suitable for reforestation.
Olson, D. M., Dinerstein, E., Wikramanayake, E. D., Burgess, N. D., Powell, G. V. N., Underwood, E. C., D'Amico, J. A., Itoua, I., Strand, H. E., Morrison, J. C., Loucks, C. J., Allnutt, T. F., Ricketts, T. H., Kura, Y., Lamoreux, J. F., Wettengel, W. W., Hedao, P., Kassem, K. R. 2001. Terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on Earth. Bioscience 51(11):933-938.
% degraded: Indicates the proportion of extant forests that are degraded, highlighting areas with reduced ecosystem integrity due to human impacts.
Grantham, H. S., A. Duncan, T. D. Evans, K. R. Jones, H. L. Beyer, R. Schuster, J. Walston, et al. 2020. “Anthropogenic Modification of Forests Means Only 40% of Remaining Forests Have High Ecosystem Integrity.” Nature Communications 11 (1): 5978. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19493-3.
Drawdown capacity (GtCO2e): The potential carbon sequestration capacity of natural forests excluding agricultural and urban areas.
Mo, L., Zohner, C. M., Reich, P. B., Liang, J., de Miguel, S., Nabuurs, G.-J., … Crowther, T. W. (2023). Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential. Nature, 1–10. doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06723-z
Drawdown rate (tCO2e/ha/yr): The annual rate at which natural forest regrowth can sequester carbon, identifying regions of rapid carbon sequestration potential.
Cook-Patton, S.C., Leavitt, S.M., Gibbs, D. et al. Mapping carbon accumulation potential from global natural forest regrowth. Nature 585, 545–550 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2686-x
Our first projects are in The Upper Guinean Forest ecoregion, a globally significant biodiversity hotspot that is one of the world's most degraded.
The region notably contains the greatest number of mammal species of any of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Many of the plant and animal species in the region are found only here.
The Upper Guinean Forest is one of the highest priority areas for ecosystem restoration globally given its biodiversity and climate change mitigation potential, with exceptional natural growth rates of vegetation.
Deforestation over the past century has reduced forest cover by around 90%, making it one of the best candidates for investment in reforestation on earth.
In numbers
1 Tappan, G. Gray, W. Matthew Cushing, Suzanne E. Cotillon, John A. Hutchinson, Bruce Pengra, Issifou Alfari, Edwige Botoni, Amadou Soulé, and Stefanie M. Herrmann. "Landscapes of West Africa: A window on a changing world."(2016).
2 Zhang-Zheng, H., Adu-Bredu, S., Duah-Gyamfi, A., Moore, S., Addo-Danso, S.D.,Amissah, L., Valentini, R., Djagbletey, G., Anim-Adjei, K., Quansah, J. and Sarpong, B., 2024. Contrasting carbon cycle along tropical forest aridity gradients in West Africa and Amazonia. Nature Communications, 15(1),p.3158.
3 Carr, Jamie, Adewale Adeleke, Angu K. Angu, Elise Belle, Neil Burgess, Savrina Carrizo, Argyrios Choimes et al. "Ecosystem profile Guinean forests of West Africa biodiversity hotspot." Critical Ecosystem PartnershipFund (2015).
4 Oates, John F., Richard A. Bergl, and Joshua M. Linder. "Africa's Gulf of Guinea forests: Biodiversity patterns and conservation priorities."(2004).
