The Right Tree in The Right Place for The Right Purpose: Supplying High-Quality Tree Planting Material of Native Tree Species for Landscape Restoration in Sub Saharan Africa (RTRP-Seed)

Project: Ongoing (2024 – 2029)

Funded by: The International Climate Initiative (IKI)

This project is taking place in Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burkina Faso (lesser activities).

Project Summary

The RTRP-Seed project addresses the challenges of African countries to meet their ambitious forest landscape restoration targets through filling the policy gaps, building capacity in native tree species (NTS) seed and seedling supply, seed mobilization and knowledge sharing. Focusing on Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Uganda, with lesser activities in Burkina Faso, RTRP-Seed enhances the availability of high-quality native seeds and seedlings for large-scale landscape restoration.

The project addresses the gap between the aspiration to plant native trees and the current practice, where the use of a narrow range of exotic species often dominates. While planting native trees is recognized as crucial for achieving forest landscape restoration goals, deficiencies in the tree seed and seedling supply sector have hindered the widespread use of native species across Sub-Saharan African countries. This project tackles these challenges by supporting the development of an enabling policy and institutional environment, building capacity in native tree species seed and seedling delivery, including through new business models for tree nurseries, and engaging in knowledge exchange to facilitate scaling to other African nations and beyond. The result will support planting more diverse, high-quality seedlings of native tree species, better contributing to biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and sustainable livelihood targets in large-scale restoration programs.

Overarching Project Goals

Climate Adapted Portfolios of Tree Diversity (CAPTD) for landscape restoration are inclusively and sustainably upscaled in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, to a lesser degree in Burkina Faso, and beyond, with strengthening of tree seed supply and delivery systems for native tree species (NTS) that are adapted to anticipated country-specific climatic conditions, and that meet both the demands of land users for planting and countries’ climate change, biodiversity conservation and land restoration targets. 

BGCI’s Role:

The Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) plays a crucial role in the RTRP-Seed project and will be instrumental in identifying priority project intervention areas that coincide with the availability of high-quality, locally-provenanced seed of a diversity of well-adapted native tree species (NTS). BGCI will contribute useful knowledge products, including vegetation maps, checklists, and up-to-date botanical survey and inventory data. In addition, BGCI will lead stakeholder consultations with the botanic garden/arboreta, and plant conservation communities. This ensures that the best available knowledge on NTS seed collection, processing, storage, and seedling raising is applied to the RTRP-Seed project.

BGCI will work in collaboration with national partners (Botanic Gardens and Conservation Organisations) to:

• Draft, consult on, and publish national NTS seed strategies for each project country, detailing national targets and recommendations for addressing current constraints.
• Update and consolidate country NTS lists, identifying species overlaps between project countries, and pinpointing project priority species.
• Support ex situ conservation strategies and action plans for NTS, aligned with national targets, including documentation of ex situ collections, protocols, and expertise related to NTS.
• Support the know-how for NTS seed collection, including locality and phenology data collection, and assembling and publishing compendiums on tree seed behaviour.
• Provide training to enhance skills in NTS seed policy, ecological restoration, seed collection- processing and storage, among staff of public institutions, commercial seed suppliers, and extension support providers.
• Establish and manage of high species diversity demonstration plot.
• Networking and sharing lessons learnt.

The RTRP-Seed project aims to benefit a wide range of stakeholders, including: 

• Farmers and other tree growers.
• National tree seed centres and nurseries, part of the formal sector
• Seed suppliers, nursery operators, and cooperatives, part of the informal sector
• Publicly- and privately funded tree planting programmes
• Government agencies involved in tree planting
• NGOs, CSOs, and scientists working on Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR)

Consortium Partners:

The RTRP-Seed project is implemented by a Consortium: CIFOR-ICRAF (Lead Consortium partner), BGCI, Unique land use GmbH, and GLF.