By promoting climate-smart landscapes, the Working Landscapes programme will contribute to climate change mitigation, adaptation, improved livelihoods, and environmental integrity, which are crucial to achieving the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Forests and trees in well-managed landscapes have the potential to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation and adaptation while supporting people’s livelihoods and sustaining agricultural value chains.
The Upper Suriname River area is one of the most populated river areas in the hinterland. This forested area is a productive landscape that provides ecosystem goods and services for the livelihoods of its inhabitants, as well as large spans of habitat for biodiversity and freshwater resources.
Situated in the northeastern part of South America, the Guiana Shield is formed by French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana and parts of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia. The region is considered the most untouched and pristine area of rain forest in the world, with a huge potential for conservation and sustainable development. More than 80% of the land area is still covered with forest, whereas human populations are small and threat levels relatively low. However, pressures are expected to grow rapidly in the near future due to determined pushes for economic development especially in the forest, mining and agricultural sectors.
Hinterland villages are a typical component of a productive landscape: a forested area where several activities occur at the same time. Apart from the living area of villages, there are activities such as, agriculture, collection of forest products, hunting and fishing, logging, tourism, mining, and infrastructural works. The hinterland villages are still mainly focusing on subsistence, despite the fact that there are income generation opportunities in light of sustainable development of the area. This implies that in developing the area, serious considerations have to be given to the causes and consequences of climate change. Within the traditional knowledge of the local communities who are strongly dependent on nature, there are ways how to recognize and how to cope with the effects of climate changes.
Suriname has been engaged in REDD since 2008, which later developed into REDD+. In 2013 the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) approved the Readiness Preparation Proposal (R-PP).