Good practice

Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (Tanzania)

Tanzania · Kilwa Masoko · See the Tanzania profile

Africa's first FSC community forest (2009): MCDI supports 40+ communities managing 410,000+ ha of Tanzanian miombo woodland, with 150,000 ha FSC-certified. REDD+ credits generated via community early-season burning that prevents destructive late-season wildfires.

40+

Communities supported

410,000+ ha

Woodland under management

150,000 ha

FSC-certified area

Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (Tanzania)

Details

Maturity: Established
Promoter: Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (MCDI)
Period: 2004-present
Keywords: Miombo woodland, fire resilience, community forestry, FSC

Context

The Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (MCDI) established Africa's first FSC-certified community forest in 2009, supporting communities to manage miombo woodland in southern Tanzania and to generate REDD+ credits through community early-season burning that prevents destructive late-season wildfires.

Implementation

Implementation detail (cost, timeline, staffing, conditions for success) is not yet available for this practice.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

C-NAPSE web research — accessed 2026-06-20
Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (MCDI) — accessed 2026-06-20
MCDI official impacts page — accessed 2026-06-20
Oryx (peer-reviewed) -- Fire is REDD+: early burning Tanzania — accessed 2026-06-20

Attachments

Source image

Quality score: 87/100

How is this calculated?

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported

Top 1% in this catalogue (335 scored practices)

Scores cluster high, so position within the catalogue is often more telling than the number alone.

Evaluation

Evaluated by C-NAPSE

Score profile — the dimensions behind the score — how it's computed

Carbon — sequestration / storage, evidenced2/3

REDD+ pilot covers 25,000 ha; early burning yields ~0.5 tC/ha/yr additional sequestration, with 500,000 tCO2 expected lifetime credits (Oryx 2015, peer-reviewed).

Biodiversity — conservation / improvement, evidenced3/3

Africa's first FSC community forest certificate (2009); 150,000+ ha of FSC-certified miombo woodland supporting one of Africa's highest mammal diversities (364 species).

Water & soil — retention, infiltration, erosion control2/3

FSC certification mandates watercourse protection and miombo woodland conservation reduces erosion, but no separate water-services payment is structured.

Fire resilience — risk reduction, evidenced3/3

Community early dry-season prescribed burning is the primary REDD+ mechanism, demonstrably reducing late-season wildfire in a landscape where ~80% burns annually without intervention (Oryx 2015).

Governance, certification & transferability3/3

Africa's first FSC community forest certificate (2009); REDD+ methodology peer-reviewed in Oryx and documented by CIFOR and IIED; 40+ communities with formalised management plans since 2004.

Cite this

Evidoria. Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (Tanzania). Persistent ID: 57870691-af91-4df0-9297-d63c6966862d.

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