evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Olympic Forest — IOC-Tree Aid Sahel Agroforestry Restoration (Mali & Senegal)

Mali · Kayes · See the Mali profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 64% 40/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

IOC and Tree Aid agroforestry programme across 90 villages in Mali and Senegal targeting 2,120 ha and 200,000 tCO2 via Plan Vivo certification; 72,505 of the planned ~355,000 trees planted by March 2023, part of Africa's Great Green Wall.

355,000-590,000
Target trees planted
2,120 hectares
Target area
200,000 tCO2
Sequestration goal
70,000
Trees planted (October 2022 update) (October 2022)
72,505
Trees planted (latest public figure) (March 2023)
90
Villages covered

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
International Olympic Committee (IOC) / Tree Aid / LA LUMIÈRE
Period
2021-present
Keywords
agroforestry, Sahel restoration, Great Green Wall, community land governance

Context

Launched in June 2021, the Olympic Forest is a joint initiative of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the UK charity Tree Aid, working with the NGO LA LUMIÈRE, to restore degraded wooded savannah and farmland across roughly 90 villages straddling the Kayes region of Mali and the Tambacounda region of Senegal. The project forms part of Africa's Great Green Wall initiative and was designed to offset more than 100% of the IOC's estimated residual emissions for 2021-2024.

Activities

The programme combines enrichment planting of native, diverse tree species with agroforestry and improved community land governance, targeting around 355,000-590,000 trees across 2,120 hectares and a sequestration goal of 200,000 tonnes of CO2. Tree Aid uses a bottom-up, participatory model in which community members, particularly women, identify suitable land, select species and agree management rules; progress is tracked with GPS monitoring and survival-rate surveys, and the project is certified to the Plan Vivo standard.

Results

An October 2022 update recorded the first 70,000 trees planted, and the most recent public figure, from March 2023, stood at 72,505 trees — roughly a fifth of the eventual target.

Conclusions

No independent report of issued Plan Vivo carbon certificates for the project was found at time of writing, so the carbon outcome should be read as a certified but partially-delivered target rather than a fully verified result. Tree Aid and the IOC themselves caution that tree planting alone is not a complete answer to the climate crisis, underlining the need for it to sit alongside other mitigation measures.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M) — No programme budget figures were published; given the multi-country, 90-village, 2,120-hectare target scale, a conservative high cost-band estimate is used.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Launched June 2021; at the reported planting pace (~72,505 of target trees by March 2023), full delivery of the 2,120 hectare/200,000 tCO2 target would extend well beyond 3 years — long band.
Staffing & skills
International Olympic Committee (IOC, funder), Tree Aid (UK charity, delivery), LA LUMIÈRE (local NGO partner), community members, especially women, as participatory land/species decision-makers

Conditions for success

  • bottom-up participatory model where community members identify suitable land, select species and agree management rules
  • GPS-based monitoring and survival-rate surveys
  • independent Plan Vivo certification

Common failure modes

  • only about 72,505 of the 355,000-590,000 target trees were confirmed planted as of the last public update (March 2023), roughly a fifth of target
  • no issued carbon certificates were found, so the carbon benefit remains unverified
  • IOC/Tree Aid themselves caution that planting alone is not a complete climate solution

Where it fits

Governance type
international sports body with international and local NGO partnership
Scale
multi-village landscape (90 villages, 2,120 hectares target)
Income level
low-income (Mali, Senegal)

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

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

Similar practices you may find useful