By: 

Ellysar Baroudy, World Bank, Practice Manager, Africa West

Olivier Mahul, Global Manager, World Bank, Climate Finance Mobilization Unit 

On a recent visit to Côte d'Ivoire, we had the pleasure of meeting dozens of inspiring sustainable farmers including a young cocoa producer named Danyo Yao Kra.  

Danyo grows cocoa trees near the city of San Pedro in Côte d'Ivoire. He recently received a first payment through the World Bank’s Emission Reductions Program in Côte d'Ivoire for his work in protecting and restoring the Taï National Park and surroundings forests. By planting shade trees on his cocoa plantation, Danyo has been able to increase his cocoa production while restoring forested areas around his community.  

Farmers like Danyo are demonstrating how the World Bank’s innovative climate finance efforts are helping to improve the livelihood of local farmers and protect forests. These efforts are being further driven by the generation and monetization of high-integrity forest carbon credits.

How Emission Reductions Programs are Making a Difference

Part of our visit involved a field trip to Côte d'Ivoire’s Taï National Park, the second largest primary forest in Africa, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage and one of the last remaining natural forests in Côte d'Ivoire, and the Rapides Grah Gazetted Forest. In these vital forested landscapes, we were joined by country delegations from Côte d’Ivoire, Costa Rica, Fiji, Madagascar, and Nepal to partake in meaningful knowledge exchanges with local authorities, and other stakeholders. These discussions provided valuable insights and guidance into the ongoing implementation of emissions reductions programs.  

Here’s what stood out to us:

1. Emission reductions programs are helping smallholder farmers access additional climate finance to improve their livelihood while protecting forests. Comprehensive policy reform, coupled with upfront finance from the Forest Investment Program and result-based payments from the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), are catalyzing investments and rewards that are contributing to meaningful sustainable development. 

In Côte d’Ivoire, we saw firsthand how local cocoa farmers in a gazetted forest are contributing to rehabilitate forest cover, improving soil fertility and yields by planting shade trees. To date, some 8,000 smallholder farmers across the agriculture sector in Côte d’Ivoire have already accessed benefits.

2. Emission reductions programs are fostering financial inclusion. Integrating financial services and digital payments into benefit sharing plans is helping to enhance efficiency and transparency. In Côte d’Ivoire, the government makes carbon credit payments via mobile money transfers, ensuring fast and secure access for beneficiaries in local communities. This digital approach is a unique innovation across the 15 countries within the FCPF Carbon Fund portfolio.

3. However, lack of legal identification has emerged as a major constraint. In Côte d’Ivoire, access to mobile money—and thus to carbon payments—requires a legal ID, which many beneficiaries did not have. This issue, not fully anticipated at the outset, slowed the rollout of payments and limited financial inclusion. One important lesson is the need to address ID access early in the design of benefit-sharing systems. While supporting access to legal ID goes beyond the program’s original goals, it is unlocking wider non-monetary benefits—connecting individuals not just to climate finance, but also to mobile services, social safety nets, and public services such as education. The experience has also helped catalyze a broader conversation about legal identification for non-Ivorians living in Côte d’Ivoire—an important but still unresolved issue. While challenges remain, this dialogue marks a step toward more inclusive systems for delivering climate finance benefits.

4. Emission reductions programs are generating significant sustainable development co-benefits. In Côte d’Ivoire, the mobile payment system used for benefit-sharing requires recipients to have a SIM card, which in turn requires a legal identification (ID) card. With support from the FCPF, the Government of Côte d’Ivoire has helped beneficiaries without ID cards obtain legal identification, expanding their access to financial and social services. This, in turn, is giving beneficiaries access to multiple rights and state benefits, supporting their social inclusion with processing fees financed by Côte d’Ivoire’s carbon credit payments.

5. Emission reductions benefit-sharing plans are complex to develop but are catalyzing change among local communities by enabling direct access to benefits. Government representatives of Côte d’Ivoire, Costa Rica, Fiji, Madagascar, and Nepal noted several barriers in the implementation of their benefit-sharing plans. But solutions exist.  

Côte d’Ivoire has made progress on this front by relying on the existing Côte d'Ivoire Park & Reserve Foundation that can direct payments to farmers via innovative mobile payments. Madagascar expressed interest in pursuing the Côte d’Ivoire model of relying on an existing protected area fund as an alternative financial management mechanism.

6. There is strong demand from countries to mobilize climate finance for development. During the field trip, delegates underscored the importance of continued access to result-based payments, including through carbon markets. Côte d’Ivoire’s Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Konan Jacques Assahore, reiterated his commitment to monetize more than 9 million excess carbon credits, and expand local community access to finance.

7. A clear exit strategy is critical to ensure the long-term sustainability of environmental and social outcomes. FCPF programs are establishing systems and institutional arrangements that will allow countries to continue to access climate finance (through the monetization of carbon credits) beyond the lifespan of World Bank projects. 

The World Bank is also helping countries to transition their programs to other standards, and to identify private sector buyers of emission reductions, for instance through the LEAF Coalition, to increase the revenue that can be shared with beneficiaries.

Moving forward, the World Bank’s SCALE trust fund will play a pivotal role in advancing the forest carbon credit inroads achieved by the FCPF and World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund Initiative for Sustainable Forest Landscapes. Through continued investments in sustainable forest landscapes and low-emissions agriculture, SCALE’s Natural Climate Solutions pillar will continue to support the protection, sustainable management, and restoration of natural ecosystems in the years ahead.  

By linking climate action to tangible benefits for communities, Côte d'Ivoire’s experience underscores that preserving critical ecosystems like Taï National Park—its last remaining natural forest—is not just an environmental necessity but a pathway to resilience and prosperity.