Dahari Conservation Agreements — Farmer-Held Forest & Water Catchment Restoration (Anjouan, Comoros)

Anjouan (Ndzuwani), the most densely populated of the Comoros islands (over 550 people/km²), has lost roughly 80% of its native forest since 1995 and roughly 40 of its 50 previously permanent rivers, as clove, ylang-ylang and food-crop farming has expanded into the remaining highland forest around Moya. The Comorian conservation NGO Dahari, working with Bangor University, the University of Oxford and Comoros National Parks, developed a conservation-agreement model that pays farmers directly to leave degraded plots fallow and let native forest regenerate.

Since 2024, Dahari has signed formal conservation agreements with highland farmers in the villages of Adda and Ouzini, paying regular (twice-yearly) cash instalments sized to the enrolled field area, plus a loyalty bonus worth two years' payments for infraction-free renewal. The long-term target is around 1,000 agreements covering roughly 1,000 hectares of remaining forest.

A CEPF-funded pilot phase (2013-2021) restored 429 hectares of water catchment forest, and nursery seedling survival rose from an average of 68% to 90% (field-planted survival averaged 71%) as techniques were refined. The pilot also protected roosting sites for 7 of the 15 known colonies of the critically endangered Livingstone's flying fox. Thirty conservation agreements have been signed so far, with zero recorded infractions in the agreements' first 18 months.

Public sources document the payment mechanism, restoration hectares and seedling-survival rates, but do not disclose the actual cash amounts paid per hectare, so the scheme's financial scale and cost-effectiveness cannot be independently verified. This should be read as a promising, evidence-informed pilot scaling toward — not yet at — its full target.