Moldova's National Forest Extension and Rehabilitation Programme (NFERP)

Moldova has one of Europe's lowest forest cover rates — historically under 10%, now around 12% — leaving degraded agricultural land vulnerable to erosion and limiting rural livelihoods. From 2003, a World Bank/BioCarbon Fund-supported Soil Conservation and Climate Change Project restored severely degraded land. Building on that record, Moldova adopted the National Forest Extension and Rehabilitation Programme (NFERP) on 17 February 2023, backed by the EU4Environment initiative and the World Bank.

NFERP targets planting 110,000 hectares of new forest and rehabilitating 35,000 hectares of existing forest by 2032, raising national forest cover to at least 15%, creating nearly 14,000 rural jobs, and protecting habitat for 162 priority species under the pan-European Emerald Network.

The completed 2003-2012 predecessor project restored more than 20,300 hectares of degraded land and generated 851,911 verified temporary Certified Emission Reductions (tCERs) — at the time the largest carbon-credit issuance from a reforestation project in the Emerging Europe and Central Asia region. NFERP itself, estimated at roughly €759 million, is projected to safeguard forest ecosystem services currently valued at about $70 million a year.

Independent verification of NFERP's own hectare and job-creation targets is not yet available since the programme runs through 2032; the strongest evidence to date rests on the completed 2003-2012 project, with the current phase resting on government and donor projections.