The Forum aims to explore the potential for private sector investment in tree-based production, marketing and processing opportunities for bringing about landscape restoration in key African countries to achieve the “triple wins” of increasing rural incomes, making yields more resilient in the face of climate extremes, and making agriculture a solution to the climate change problem rather than part of the problem.

The Forum is an outcome of the Hague Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change and is an important milestone leading up to the UNFCCC climate change talks scheduled for December 2011 in Durban.

It is being organized by the World Agroforestry Centre in collaboration with the World Bank Group, the Programme on Forests (PROFOR), IUCN and EcoAgriculture Partners.

Historically, both public and private sector investments in the forest sector in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen short of their potential for generating income, mobilizing rural economic development, reducing poverty, increasing food security, and protecting and restoring the environment. This is in spite of the fact that the continent has possibly the greatest potential for investment in this sector.

The Forum will bring together about 150 representatives from leading private sector financial institutions, forest and agribusiness companies, local communities, smallholders, national forest associations and high level national government policy leaders. The participants will seek to identify immediate investment opportunities, discuss the main constraints to investment, identify policy and institutional reforms needed to overcome those constraints, and develop mechanisms to help create an enabling climate for accelerated private sector investment. An official letter of invitation and a proposed agenda will be sent out shortly. This will include an overview of the proposed coverage of three main background papers, a shortlist of recently developed reference material prepared by leading global research analysts and a summary of the relevant ongoing activities that are seeking to address these issues.