This event brings together WBG programs from the Southern Caucasus to West and Central Africa working across forest systems to make the case that protecting and restoring nature is one of the highest-return investments a country can make for jobs, growth, and poverty reduction. Drawing on operational experience, emerging research, and innovative financing approaches, it will explore how integrated landscape management can generate employment, build resilience, mobilize private capital, and translate GBF commitments into measurable gains for people and nature, directly embodying the COP-17 theme of Taking Action for Nature.

Healthy forest landscapes are not only biodiversity assets; they are also economic infrastructure that supports jobs, livelihoods, water security, food production, tourism, and resilience. Drawing on RESILAND Armenia, the Sahel RESILAND Umbrella Program, the Sustainable Congo Basin Forest Economies MPA, and work in the Upper Guinea forest region, the discussion will examine how sustainable integrated landscape management can strengthen forest economies, develop durable value chains, and create income and employment opportunities for rural communities. The Armenia experience will highlight ecotourism and non-timber forest products as practical pathways for increasing local value addition, expanding market opportunities, strengthening community participation, and supporting women’s economic opportunities. The West and Central African experience, with one of the most globally significant biodiverse and climate-critical ecosystems, will demonstrate that investing in the natural infrastructure underpinning sustainable forest economies are an economic win as much as an environmental one, with direct impacts on water security, food production, and the jobs and income opportunities that healthy landscapes make possible.

The session will explore the enabling conditions required to scale these approaches, including effective institutions, access to finance, private-sector engagement, stronger markets and value chains, community participation, and credible biodiversity and ecosystem monitoring. Through a cross-regional exchange, the event will identify transferable lessons for translating biodiversity commitments into investments that support inclusive economic development, conservation, and landscape resilience.