The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a non-governmental organization dedicated to nature protection. Aiming to support African countries to meet their ambitious tree cover and land restoration targets, the organization is developing a new impact investment vehicle designed to finance tree planting in Africa called the ‘Tree Fund’. The Tree Fund is envisaged to support commercially-driven tree planting with a special emphasis on smallholders. To ensure the Tree Fund’s alignment with environmental and social best practices, criteria are needed that indicate whether proposed plantation establishment is planned and implemented in a sustainable manner. UNIQUE was commissioned to assist TNC to develop high-level social and environmental sustainability criteria for the Tree Fund, and to pilot the developed criteria in a selected forestry enterprise in Kenya.

• Revision of national (Kenyan), regional and international sustainability criteria and standards.
• Development of tailored sustainability criteria for the Tree Fund.
• Validation of the sustainability criteria to local conditions through expert interviews.
• Evaluation of one forestry company against the proposed sustainability criteria.