The Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) on Friday announced a new partnership to collaborate on knowledge, sharing, technical expertise and engagement on some key areas such as sustainable supply of agricultural commodities, business models and services provision to smallholders, innovations in financing mechanisms to provide affordable credit to smallholders, investment models that help build alternative livelihoods for smallholders, and forest management and restoration that account for the needs of smallholders.
The partnership was announced at the 2016 Asia-Pacific Rainforest Summit (APRS) in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam. It was formalised in June 2016 under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by SNV’s Chief Executive Officer, Allert van den Ham, and CIFOR’s Director-General, Peter Holmgren.
With a common outlook of landscape-based strategies associated with sustainable agricultural supply and improved smallholders’ livelihoods, which deliver improved benefits for climate change adaptation and mitigation and economic development, CIFOR and SNV have agreed to build on each other’s strengths to further their respective missions.
The partnership and coordination are being led by Richard McNally, SNV Global Coordinator for Climate Change, and Pablo Pacheco, CIFOR Principal Scientist and Team Leader for Value Chains, Finance and Investments.
“SNV is very excited to become a strategic partner with CIFOR. This will bring more research and scientific rigor into our more complex programs exploring the relationships between smallholder agriculture, forest protection and landscape management,” McNally said.
“CIFOR sees significant value in this partnership as part of our efforts to link our research to actions in the ground that work for forests, economic development and rural livelihoods. SNV has developed an important capacity that will contribute to link our research to practice in ways that are meaningful to different local realities,” Pacheco said.
SNV is a not-for-profit development organization with a focus on poverty alleviation and sustainable development. CIFOR is a non-profit, scientific facility that conducts research on the most pressing challenges of forest and landscape management. Both have a long-term presence across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
CIFOR is a non-profit, global facility dedicated to advancing human well-being, environmental conservation and equity.
