notice_summary_english: Introduction :
4.3.2 Personnel Management Support for the #FREETOWNTHETREETOWN Project, Freetown, Sierra Leone
BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE
UNDP is supporting Freetown City Council to implement the #FreetownTheTreeTown project which includes a portfolio of community reforestation projects. Freetown, Sierra Leone, is among the world’s rainiest cities. They have also experienced rapid tree loss in recent years, estimated at some 555 hectares – or 500.000 trees – annually since 2011. The national government oversees the legal framework governing land use, limiting Freetown’s options for curbing tree loss, and requiring reforestation. Heavy rains, coupled with this deforestation, have resulted in devastating landslides, including an event in 2017 which claimed nearly 1,000 lives. #FreetownTheTreetown is an initiative to reforest the city and surrounding areas to reverse tree loss and reduce disaster risks
To address this serious issue, the Freetown City Council launched the #FreetownTheTreeTown campaign in January 2020. In the first four years of the project (2020 – 2024) 977,000 trees have been planted, digitally tracked and ‘tokenized’, with 1000 hectares of urban land in and around Freetown restored against a goal to plant and grow one million trees. At this stage a ‘token’ is created for each verified tree to give it a value which goes into Freetown’s digital wallet, from where it can go into a market and be sold to create revenue to fund the #TreeTown campaign. Attaching value (a ‘token’) to each tree has enabled an income for a household to look after that tree in the community where the reforestation is happening. Freetown is creating a market for reforestation to fund the trees’ growth and support further planting through the private and voluntary carbon markets. 
The one million tree goal has been expanded to 5-7 million trees by 2030 and a 500,000-ton CO2 sequestration potential has been determined, but sustainable finance is required to me