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

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.

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.

Implementation has been gradual and openly reported: 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. 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.

Read the full analysis: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/08/the-olympic-forest-picking-up-the-pace-of-africa-s-great-green-wall/