Payments for Environmental Services
More than one million hectares of forest are lost every year in Central Africa, mainly due to poverty-driven slash-and-burn agriculture and small-scale charcoal production. Traditional enforcement tools have had limited impact because they do not change the economic incentives that drive forest loss.
Payments for Environmental Services offer a different approach. By providing a direct revenue stream to farmers and rural communities for verified, measurable results obtained through adopting sustainable practices, they enabling rural households to increase their income while reducing deforestation and strengthening climate action Â
What are Payments for Environmental Services?
Six activities eligible for payments
How do they work ?
PES follows a five-step process: enable, contract, implement and monitor, verify and pay.
Participants voluntarily enrol and validate land rights; they then sign PES contracts that specify activities and payment rules. Once activities are implemented and results monitored using geotagged photos, field verification and satellite imagery, uploaded into the PES Management Tool, and complemented by independent checks. Once performance is confirmed, payments are delivered through mobile money, vouchers or bank transfers.Â
What is the PES potential in Central Africa?
Central Africa has one of the world’s highest potentials for Payments for Environmental Services. CAFI PES could be deployed on approximately 35 million hectares, taking into account lands already occupied (by villages, protected areas, forest concessions, etc).Â
Modelling shows that full deployment of PES across this area could generate exceptional benefits, including the potential to*
- avoid and sequester 939 MtCOâ‚‚ over a first 5-year programme
- reach directly 12.6 million households
- avoid 634,000 hectares of deforestation each year
PES could play a major role in avoiding deforestation, improving food and energy security and stimulating rural economies. This vision aligns with the BelĂ©m Call to Action, which urges rainforest regions and partners to scale up solutions that link forest protection with fair economic opportunities.Â
Estimated using CAFI’s Ground Impact tool Â
What are results to date ?
2025 : A first test of the PES full delivery chain in DRC and Republic of Congo
2025 has provided the first test of CAFI’s approach to standardising and scaling Payments for Environmental Services across the Congo Basin. Building on several years of methodological development and field experience, the first payments were delivered in December 2025 through harmonised systems and procedures designed for future expansion. Pilot implementation in the DRC and the Republic of Congo tested the full PES delivery chain, under real conditions.
Land use clarified
Procedures tested
Reforestation
Natural regeneration
These first transactions demonstrated that the full PES cycle from enrolment and contracting to verification and payment- can
operate under real field conditions. For participating beneficiaries, these payments represented a tangible recognition of efforts to restore and sustainably manage
land. For implementing partners, they demonstrated that environmental performance can be linked to direct, traceable
payments through mobile money systems, creating incentives that align local livelihoods with forest conservation objectives.
The relatively high proportion of applications requiring revision or rejection provided valuable lessons on beneficiary outreach, documentation requirements and data quality control. These operational lessons are already informing the next phase of scale up, being integrated into PROBAK and the regional PES scale-up programme.
2026 : nearly 22,000 beneficiaries received payments in Cameroon
In Cameroon, the National Funds for Coffee and Cocoa (FODECC) paid close to 22,000 beneficiaries under CAFI funding for zero-deforestation agriculture. A independent verification will confirm project- reported results.Â
What are CAFI’s PES tools ?
CAFI has developed two complementary digital tools to make PES transparent, efficient and scalable.
The PES Management Tool oversees the entire PES lifecycle, from enrolment and contract creation to field monitoring, verification, reporting and payments. Find out more on this page
Ground Impact, CAFI’s PES planning tool, uses spatial data, ecological modelling and economic forecasts to identify where PES can deliver the greatest climate and development returns. Learn and explore here
Together, these tools provide the technical foundation needed for large-scale performance-based land-use incentives across the Congo Basin.Â
What's next ?
CAFI continuously advances its PES programming pipeline, with, by June 2026, $ 245M committed and 75M$ in already approved projects
DRC
Through its Kinshasa Supply Basin PES Programme, or PROBAK, and following the launch of a USD 25 million Call for Expressions of Interest in May 2025,
- A $13 M PES project with the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC) was approved in November 2025.
- A $15 M project with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was finalised shortly thereafter and approved in early 2026.
These two projects set the stage for scale-up from 2026.
Cameroon
- A $20 M project with KfW, focusing on the Grand Mbam landscape (October 2025)
- A $24.5 M project with IDH, targeting small and medium entreprises (April 2026)
Central African Republic
- A $10M project focusing on Bangui and its periphery, with UNDP (July 2026)
A US$ 100 M regional programme
In parallel, CAFI prepared the first regional scale-up call for PES projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, for up to USD 100 million in CAFI funding. These countries were included following the development of national PES roadmaps during the 2025 Interministerial Kinshasa Conference on PES in Central Africa and their shared commitment to develop ambitious PES portfolios using the regional PES framework methodologies and tools.