Annual meeting of PAPFor Steering Committee

Following its first meeting in September 2021, the regional programme’s steering committee held its annual meeting on Wednesday 26 October 2022 to review progress and plan for 2023.

The PAPFor Steering Committee members

• The European Union Delegations of Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria,
• The West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS),
• Representatives of the national authorities in charge of protected areas and other relevant state agencies or ministries,
• The PAPFor implementing agencies working in the six transboundary forest landscapes,
• The PAPFor regional coordinator and Agreco, as secretariat.

Progress and goals

With all six landscape programmes up and running, the 40 meeting participants looked at progress made and reviewed achievements against indicators of the PAPFor funding agreement.
There were presentations on two areas of support by PAPFor: community forests (with Gola as a case study presented by RSPB) and protected area support (with Nimba as a case study presented by UNOPS). GIZ also reported on progress in the Tai-Grebo-Sapo landscape.

There followed a presentation from the Regional Coordination, on progress made and with a special focus on monitoring of the funding agreement’s logframe.

Overall, good progress was noted in most areas, with over 60% of the targets already met and a further 17% to be met by end of 2023. Only 3 to 5 targets out of 24 may not be fully achieved by the end of the programme.
Among other things, important progress was noted on IMET assessment (a tool to assess protected area management effectiveness) and support to management plans, as well as on community engagement.

Budget

The programme’s budget is spent in the range of 14 to 56%, with an average of 37%.
The committee noted that the implementation period for two landscapes (TGKS and Gola) comes to an end in a few weeks and it recommended a no cost extension of these contracts.

Communication

The Eurata Consortium made a presentation on progress in the implementation of the PAPFor communication plan, which includes the development of a Facebook page, website, newsletter, posters, and a gallery of photos and videos captured from the landscapes. In addition, Marc Languy, PAPFor Regional Coordinator, used the opportunity to announce the launch of this PAPFor website which went live during the meeting.

Next steps

The EU Delegation in Burkina Faso and WAEMU noted the significant progress made during the past 12 months. They urged the implementing agencies to speed up efforts to catch up with delays dating from 2020 or 2021, largely due to COVID-related constraints or to the late start of some landscape programmes.
The next steering committee will be held in October 2023 and will probably be held face to face. More news will be shared about this in subsequent newsletters.