Forests are economies at-scale. The Congo Basin proves it.

Forests underpin livelihoods, generate employment, reduce poverty, and strengthen food systems for billions of people worldwide. Celebrated annually on 21 March, this year’s theme for International Day of Forests “Forests and Economies” emphasizes that forests provide the foundational infrastructure for many countries’ economies. The World Economic Forum estimates that approximately USD $44 trillion of economic value generated, over half of the world’s total GDP, is highly dependent on nature. More specifically, forests contribute over USD $1.3 trillion to the global economy and provide employment to more than 33 million people. Forests provide direct incomes and wider economic services by offering food, fuel, building materials, and non-timber forest products such as medicinal plants, resins, and fibres. 

Sustainable forest management is vital to ensuring forests thrive and serve people and the planet. Nowhere is this more illustrated, and at the same time underestimated, than in the Congo Basin of Central Africa. Extending across six countries including Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of Congo, the Congo Basin contains the world’s second-largest contiguous tropical forest, is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth that is home to 10,000 unique species, and the largest forest carbon sink in the world, storing more than 29 billion tonnes of carbon. This is equivalent to about three years worth of global greenhouse gas emissions. With the immense level of natural resources and serving in an irreplaceable role within the global climate system, it is surprising that the Congo Basin is still profoundly undervalued and underinvested. This highlights a broader issue of the lack of infrastructure to turn forests into bankable and scalable assets that generate returns for local communities and investors alike.

Because of the growing external threats to the Congo Basin, in 1999, heads of state of Central Africa made a historic collective commitment towards sustainable forest management which led to the establishment of the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC). Today, COMIFAC is the sole regional authority for political orientation, coordination, and decision-making on the conservation and sustainable management of Central Africa's forest ecosystems and savannas. Its Convergence Plan, adopted by heads of state and updated in 2014, encompasses everything from harmonising forest policies and fiscal frameworks to biodiversity protection, community participation, and innovative finance. Five major transboundary protected area complexes have been established under COMIFAC's coordination, which is a landmark achievement in regional environmental governance.

In parallel to the establishment of COMIFAC, USAID built one of the most sustained forest conservation partnerships in Africa, the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE). In 2002, the United States committed over USD $53 million to the Congo Basin Forest Partnership, bringing together over 70 partners from African governments, international organisations, NGOs, scientific institutions, and the private sector. From 2003 to 2012, USAID disbursed an average of USD $15 million per year to support sustainable forestry, biodiversity conservation, and poverty alleviation across the nine countries within the Congo Basin. Throughout its 25-year tenure, USAID’s CARPE program trained more than 50,000 people in remote sensing and spatial planning which eventually led to the establishment of the Central African Forest Satellite Observatory (OSFAC). CARPE has evolved over the years, building on its foundations, and adopting a people-centred approach, which has led to embracing an inclusive market-based approach to conservation.

Despite decades of institutional governance and scientific research support to strengthen the role of community resource governance and management of conservation enterprises, the Congo Basin still only attracts a fraction of private investment that is needed to sustainably manage and protect the region’s ecological endowment. The investment gap is a result of a deeply entrenched structural problem with barriers that continue to repeat themselves: 

1	Projects are not built for investors. Most initiatives in the region are designed as conservation or development projects, and not as commercial propositions with clear revenue models, quantified risk profiles, and investor-grade exit pathways. Capital cannot flow to what it cannot evaluate.
2	The early-stage gap kills momentum. There is almost no dedicated funding for project preparation, from feasibility studies, deal structuring, and investment design. Good ideas stall long before they reach bankability.
3	Risk is bundled rather than managed. Country risk, sector risk, and execution risk are treated as a single, undifferentiated obstacle. Without targeted de-risking instruments, institutional investors walk away rather than engage.
4	Existing funding vehicles are not designed to build pipelines. Most climate and forest funds are structured to allocate capital, and not necessarily to structure new and long-term investment deals. They engage too late in the project lifecycle, long after bankability should already have been established.
5	No aggregation means no scale. Even strong opportunities remain too small and fragmented to meet institutional thresholds. There is no mechanism to bundle, standardize, and present deals at the scale investors require.
6	Community integration is too often an afterthought. Field experience across the region consistently shows that conservation only works when communities closest to the forest benefit directly from its management. Designing programs without deep, field-based community engagement is a project viability failure.

A new approach to investment is needed to prepare investments that continue building community resilience, scale nature-based solutions and economies and invest in forest conservation . This means that a commercial mindset must be embedded from the very origination of project design, and in which communities are established as co-owners and concessional capital is used to de-risk private investment. And finally, individual projects are aggregated into portfolios that can meet institutional investor thresholds, whereby COMIFAC's governance frameworks, national conservation commitments, and global capital markets are interwoven into one streamlined pipeline.

This is the gap WICE is positioned to fill. Through established field experience throughout the Congo Basin, drawing on institutional relationships that are remnants from USAID’s CARPE program and COMIFAC partnership, and sustained engagement with community associations, WICE is able to build upon some major commitments including:

1	Funding Project Preparation, by financing feasibility studies, structuring new deals, and designing investment strategies for strong ideas to become bankable.
2	Embedding Commercial Discipline, by building every project with clear revenue models, risk profiles, and exit pathways that institutional capital can evaluate, from day one.
3	Viewing Communities as Co-Owners, by structuring community associations and women-led enterprises as genuine economic stakeholders with binding benefit-sharing agreements.
4	Ensuring Targeted De-Risking, by using concessional capital to reduce real and perceived risk, thereby crowding in private investment rather than substituting for it.
5	Aggregating at Scale, by bundling projects into standardized portfolios that meet institutional investor thresholds and attract serious long-term capital.
6	Developing a Policy-to-Capital Pipeline, that links COMIFAC governance frameworks, national conservation commitments, and capital markets into one coherent investment pipeline.

The Congo Basin is rich with Indigenous and community knowledge, ecological biodiversity and natural resources, and an established track record of successful people-centered conservation programming. Instead, what is woefully lacking is the financial infrastructure to convert this unique natural capital and potential into bankable and scalable investment assets. 

In celebration of this year’s International Day of Forests, WICE is looking to build new networks and partnerships to turn forests into bankable, scalable investment assets generating returns for local communities and investors.

About WICE

WICE is a global, women-owned network of development professionals dedicated to advancing health and sustainable agri-food systems, food security, social impact, and environmental stewardship.  Originally founded in 1989, our organization has evolved to manage complex development programs and champion innovation across climate resilience, food security, and humanitarian assistance. We remain committed to driving progress through technical expertise and collaborative action.