Short description of the overall project

Up to 90 percent of rural households in Georgia rely on fuelwood for their energy needs, most importantly heating during the country’s cold winters. This leads to forest degradation and a reduction of carbon absorption capacity, which is projected to decrease by five times between 1990 and 2030.

This project is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by enhancing carbon sequestration through the introduction of sustainable forest management in three Georgian regions. This includes tackling the pressures of deforestation and the high demand for fuelwood. It will increase the uptake of energy efficient stoves through an innovative combination of market development, along with technical and financial assistance to local stove and alternative fuel producers and customers. The durability of the project will be strengthened by helping beneficiaries adapt to a new forest code and by developing sustainable livelihoods linked to forestry products.

Short description of activities financed by the donation

The project will enable the Government of Georgia to implement its transformational forest sector reform agenda to put the entire nation’s forests under the SFM framework. It will do so by supporting establishment of a nation-wide SFM system under Component 1 and in parallel, under Component 2, promoting market development for energy efficient (EE) and alternative fuels (AF) 3 to address main driver of Georgia’s forest degradation, the unsustainable fuelwood consumption by rural population. Component 3, addressing potential adverse effects of the forest sector reform, safeguards the reform implementation by diversifying livelihood opportunities and strengthening local selfgovernance in forest adjoining rural communities.

The project will focus on three target regions that serve as a model for the implementation of SFM: Guria, Kakheti, and Mtskheta-Mtianeti.