For years the Tanzanian government, NGO partners, community groups and other local organisations have been working tirelessly to sustain the forests and biodiversity of the Udzungwa Mountains in central Tanzania, where deforestation and hunting threaten one of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world.

Although these organisations have been working for years to reduce biodiversity loss, the effectiveness of their actions has been constrained by insufficient funding. This has limited their conservation impact and hindered coordination on the ground.

In recent years, partly due to increased funding support from Hempel and other donors, they have been able to align and collaborate around a shared strategy to address the main drivers of deforestation. To further accelerate these efforts, the Hempel Foundation is providing long-term landscape conservation funding to STEP and the broader donor coalition to support their coordinated and effective responses to the ever-changing challenges in the landscape.

Landscape-scale conservation and restoration is not a short-term activity. It takes years to address drivers of deforestation, sustainably improve the local economy, increase the capacity of national partners to ensure effective and sustained impact, and develop alternative sources of financing to reduce reliance on philanthropy. In other words, it takes time to create a sustainable landscape.

Arguably the most important long-term component of a landscape strategy is the creation of sustainable financing flows. Without sustainable financing models that generate a financial return from forest management, landscape conservation depends entirely on philanthropy. Many activities will end if the funding stops. It is therefore important not only for Hempel to support landscape conservation today, but to simultaneously support the development of new sources of financing for tomorrow.

The Udzungwa Mountains have many potential sources of financing for their long-term conservation. Tourism has growing potential. The carbon market could support forest conservation and restoration. Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes could be applied, especially when linked to freshwater provision. There is also potential in the newly emerging biodiversity credits sector. To seeks ways to generate new sources of funding for the landscape, the Hempel Foundation is supporting a pilot biodiversity credits initiative in the Udzungwas. This aims to measure and monetise the improved biodiversity status in the landscape due to the conservation efforts of the partner coalition.

In addition, the Hempel Foundation also supports donor coalitions, where multiple donors come together to fund the Udzungwa Mountains in a coordinated manner for even greater combined impact.

The long-term sustainability of the Udzungwa Mountains not only relies on sustainable financing, it also relies on the capacities of the implementing partners. The Hempel Foundation is therefore committed to supporting organizational capacity development as a core component of our strategy for accelerated impact in the Udzungwa Mountains. We aim to help our partners to be as effective as possible, and to help them to achieve their own organization goals and ambitions. Only with strong national capacity and long-term funding in place can a landscape be sustained.

We support improved capacity for the Tanzanian government staff who manage the protected areas of the Udzungwa Mountains. This includes training for protected area staff, support for more personnel to ensure the protected areas are more adequately staffed, and the provision of equipment and training to improve the effectiveness of their efforts. It also includes focused organizational development support for our core partner STEP, to help them to grow and accelerate their impact according to their organizational vision and strategy. We want to help STEP to achieve its organizational needs, by providing flexible funding so they can increase their capacities and fill gaps in their organizational structure and capabilities. This will help them to be even more effective in the long-term.