FFF was officially launched on 28 September 2012 during the 21^st Session of the Committee on Forestry (COFO). Drawing on the lessons learned from both the NFP Facility in 80 partner countries and the closely related Growing Forest Partnerships (GFP) Programme, the new Facility will address the remaining challenges in NFP implementation. In addition, it will support brand new initiatives to help countries improve their governance structures at different levels (local, national and regional) to achieve sustainable forest landscape management, whilst boosting food security and promoting climate-smart agriculture.

Funded through multiple agencies and planned to be executed in some three dozen countries across the world, the FFF will initially be implemented in six pilot countries of Africa (The Gambia & Liberia), Asia (Myanmar & Nepal), and Latin America (Guatemala & Nicaragua). Its mission is “support for smallholder producer organization to provide business incentives and policy voice for sustainable forest landscapes”. Its work will focus on two interrelated pillars: a) organize producer groups for business development and policy engagement; (b) facilitate cross-sector dialogue on how to improve the enabling environment for producer group business at government level. FFF will support countries to facilitate strong and equitable organizations and networks amongst smallholders, women groups, communities and Indigenous Peoples, enabling them to:

• Make their voices heard in policy making processes at local, regional, national and global levels on forest and farm related issues, like food security, SFM, climate change, bioenergy and water.
• Have increased capacity and opportunity to access financing and investments for forest and farm development.

It will support national and sub-national governments to:

• Establish multi -sectoral platforms (through dialogues, information and capacity building) to better-coordinate the various ministries, private sector and civil society stakeholders involved in, or affected by, policies and activities related to forest and farm management like food security, SFM, climate change, bio energy and water.

The major objective of this workshop was to validate the baseline study and develop and agree on a modality for implementation of FFF in Nepal, which is acceptable to all the concerned stakeholders. Specific objectives were to: 

• Discuss and validate the Baseline Study conducted by IUCN Nepal,

• Discuss and agree on the next steps (incl. work plan 2013) for implementation of the FFF in Nepal based on the two pillars (i) organization of producers for policy dialogue and business development (ii) cross-sectoral government coordination, and

• Discuss and agree on pilot area selection criteria (and possibly suggest some sites)

The details outcomes of the workshop can be viewed on the proceedings.