International Day of Forests: Climate resilience in action
Discover how our Forest Impact Accelerator is helping people and nature adapt to climate change by preserving these vital landscapes.
Today is International Day of Forests! Covering almost a third of the Earth’s land, forests contain over 80% of all land animals, insects and plant species, and are home for around 300 million people. Forests recycle the air we breathe, purify water, regulate rainfall and store carbon, making them a key player in the fight against climate change.
Worldwide, climate change is intensifying floods, droughts, heatwaves and fire, leading to degraded forest landscapes that negatively impact the biodiversity and communities that depend on them. But across our partnership, BirdLife Partners are showing how locally led, Nature-based Solutions can reduce risk and protect livelihoods, helping communities and ecosystems adapt.
The Forest Impact Accelerator was designed precisely for this purpose: to turn promising ideas into investable, durable solutions that strengthen climate resilience while conserving biodiversity and boosting local livelihoods.
What is the Forest Impact Accelerator?
Our Accelerator is like an incubator that supports early stage, locally led Sustainable Finance Initiatives (SFIs). From community enterprises and Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) to trust funds and high-integrity forest carbon projects, nature conservation and restoration become financially sustainable over the long term.
Partners receive tailored technical assistance, seed grants, peer learning, and investor matchmaking. The current five-year programme aims to help 23 SFIs progress through the pipeline, with 13 reaching full functionality. Together they are targeting one million hectares of Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and benefiting more than 200,000 people, including at least 30% women. Impact will be tracked through a Forest Impact Dashboard that will integrate local and global data to monitor climate, biodiversity, and social outcomes.
“On this International Day of Forests, we are celebrating the power of innovation to keep our forests standing. BirdLife’s Forest Impact Accelerator is transforming the future of conservation by unlocking sustainable finance, empowering local Partners, and scaling up solutions that protect over a million hectares of vital tropical forest while supporting the communities and biodiversity that depend on them. It proves that when we value forests for the life they sustain, we can secure them for generations to come.”
Christina Van Winkle, Forests Programme Officer at birdlife international
Header Image: Tropical Forest © Panga Media.
Meet our ten chosen Partners
This year’s Accelerator cohort spans tropical forest landscapes in Africa, Asia and the Americas, all tackling climate risk in location specific ways while building sustainable finance in their landscapes.
Across the cohort, the common thread is resilience through diversification: ecosystems (restore, protect, connect) and livelihoods (NTFPs, agroforestry, ecotourism, PES, carbon). This combination reduces exposure to climate hazards and creates buffers, both financial and ecological, when extreme events occur.
The FIA will measure both quantitative and qualitative indicators, such as hectares of forest restored and globally threatened species, as well as income diversified, inclusion and other measures of wellbeing. Some indicators measure impact across the whole portfolio, while others are specific to local projects, ensuring we track what truly matters to communities.
Designed for climate resilience from the beginning
What distinguishes the Accelerator is that climate risk is built into the design of each project. Partners assess hazards, including floods, fire and drought, and identify who and what is most exposed. They also target nature-based actions that directly reduce risk, such as native forest recovery on steep slopes to cut landslide risk, or diversified agroforestry to buffer crop failure.
The Accelerator’s four pillar support – technical assistance, seed grants, collaborative learning, and strategic communications – helps teams build robust business cases, benefit sharing, governance, and safeguarding measures that make solutions investable and fair.
The Forest Impact Dashboard will then provide a transparent way to show progress to communities, governments, and investors. It will combine remote sensing with field data and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) indicators, enabling adaptive management as climate conditions evolve.
Overall, the Accelerator is vital as the world urgently needs to meet its climate and biodiversity goals.
“The Accelerator gave us the flexibility and support to test and explore ideas for sustainable finance mechanisms. We developed the skills and knowledge needed to design and implement mechanisms to attract private finance.”
Vorsak Bou, CEO of NatureLife Cambodia
The Forest Impact Accelerator has run for five successful years with generous support from the Hempel Foundation, Waterloo Foundation and the King Charles III Charitable Fund, as well as £6 million of additional funding sourced in collaboration with our Partners. This year, we were awarded an important Darwin Initiative Extra grant funded by the UK Government’s Biodiversity Challenge Funds, a programme that supports global biodiversity conservation, reduces poverty, and addresses climate change. The £4,978,335 award will expand and scale these achievements to secure 1 million hectares of Key Biodiversity Areas while generating economic benefits for 200,000 local people.
