Gazetted Forests Participatory Management Project — Household PES Contracts for Reforestation (Burkina Faso)

Burkina Faso's Gazetted Forests Participatory Management Project, funded with $11.5-12.5 million from the Climate Investment Funds' Forest Investment Program (FIP) and implemented with the African Development Bank, aimed to restore roughly 284,000 hectares across 12 of the country's 77 state-owned classified ("gazetted") forests, most under 40% tree cover, benefiting an estimated 5,400 direct households (2,700 women) and around 850,000 people indirectly.

In August 2017, researchers tested two payment-for-environmental-services designs within the project — a linear per-tree-surviving payment ($0.62/tree) and a threshold contract (paying $62-238 per five-person group depending on tree-survival tier) — and found that timing cash payments to the lean season, when rural food insecurity peaks, reduced household food insecurity by 35% and severe food insecurity by 60%, with no measurable displacement of labour from farming.

The results, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, demonstrate a rigorously evidenced PES contract-design mechanism rather than a fully scaled national payment programme: public sources document the pilot's design and outcomes but not the current number of households receiving ongoing payments beyond the study period, nor direct measurements of carbon sequestration or biodiversity gained from the restored forest.

Read the full analysis: https://www.cif.org/news/can-pes-pay-poor-or-does-food-security-grow-trees