Dear Colleagues, 
 
Welcome to the PROGREEN quarterly newsletter.  
 
PROGREEN is the World Bank-led Umbrella Program for Sustainable and Resilient Landscapes, which helps countries meet their national and global sustainable development goals and commitments in a cost-effective manner. As shown in the video below, it is designed to improve livelihoods while strengthening investment in management and conservation of forests and all terrestrial ecosystems, biodiversity conservation, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

Germany is the seed funder for PROGREEN, underscoring Germany’s strong focus on forests, landscape restoration, climate change, and biodiversity.
 
PROGREEN focuses on three priority areas: 


PROGREEN builds on the success of the long-standing Program on Forests (PROFOR) knowledge partnership. However, PROGREEN’s scope goes beyond analytical work to in-country implementation of landscape programs and project development and encompasses forests and all terrestrial ecosystems. 
 
This first PROGREEN newsletter provides an overview of PROGREEN’s initial set of country programs, flagship studies, and country knowledge activities. To help keep our stakeholders informed, we just launched the PROGREEN Twitter page, so please follow to stay up to date on our programs. We are excited that our first project within our Country Programs was approved on March 18: the Second Ethiopia Resilient Landscapes and Livelihoods project.

I look forward to sharing knowledge and program results with you about PROGREEN.  
 
Best wishes,

Garo Batmanian 
 
PROGREEN’s initial work plan supports a set of country and regional programs designed to strengthen implementation of an integrated landscape approach, a series of flagship studies on topics important to sustainable landscape management, and country-specific knowledge generation to advance understanding of the benefits and importance of an integrated landscape approach. 
News and Events
Upcoming event: Innovate4Climate (I4C) 2021 May 26
PROGREEN will co-host an I4C workshop on Transformative Finance for Sustainable Landscape Management on Wednesday, May 26 at 11:30 am -12:20 pm (EDT) (15.30-15.45 UTC). The session will focus on how landscape programs can help provide jobs and improve livelihoods while delivering on carbon sequestration goals.
As part of the official launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, PROGREEN will support a High-Level Session on Financing Restoration entitled “Financial Innovations for a Green Recovery and Restoration” on June 1, from 11-11:45 am EDT (15.00-15.45 UTC).
At the GLF Africa, PROGREEN will convene a session on Satellite Monitoring for Forest Management. The event will share practical knowledge and tools for monitoring forest cover change due to forest loss or restoration and feature country experiences in applying such tools. The event will take place June 3 from 7-8:30 am EDT (11.00-12.30 UTC).
PROGREEN co-hosted a session with the World Bank on Landscape biodiversity for healthy people and healthy economies: tools for preventing future pandemics and for re-establishing nature-based tourism (NBT) after COVID-19.
Watch the recording for key lessons from the Program on Forests (PROFOR) and New Opportunities from the PROGREEN Partnership for Sustainable Landscapes and Climate Emissions Reduction Fund (CERF).
Fiscal policy will always impact forest production and conservation incentives; thus, the question is not whether to use it, but how to use it consciously. We need to empower decision makers to harness the power of fiscal policy for consciously creating incentives that direct future development onto a more sustainable path.
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Working with many partners, PROGREEN will invest $14.5 million in five Sahelian countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Mali, Mauritania.
Follow @forestideas on Twitter for the latest news.
Quotes from the launch of PROGREEN
"PROGREEN is an innovative way to create more sustainable and resilient landscapes and natural habitats. The program brings together sectors that rarely coordinate in order to reduce deforestation and the degradation of forests and land. It aims for impact at scale, by supporting the shift from transactional project approaches to performance-based approaches focused on improving national policies. We are grateful to have committed partners such as Germany to help us achieve solutions for these pressing problems.”
“The green lungs of our planet are burning. Deforestation is threatening the climate and destroying wildlife and human habitats. We must put an end to that. We must use our planet’s natural resources sustainably to preserve them for the future. PROGREEN will make an important contribution to this.” 
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