AFBIO: Timor-Leste’s Living Landscapes: Agroforestry for Biodiversity and Resilience

Project Details

Status: Active
GCBC Funding Round: RGC3
Grant Value: £999,000
Dates: Jul 26-Dec 28

Published 13 Jul 2026

GCBC

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Project Summary

Countries: Timor Leste

Delivery Partner: International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF)

Project Partners: IUCN- International Union for Conservation of Nature, FUNDAÇÃO BIAMALAI, Asian Forest Cooperation Organization (AFoCO)

Principal Investigator: Sonya Dewi, International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF)

Challenge

The AFBIO project is designed to deliver transformative outcomes by directly addressing the interconnected challenges of poverty, biodiversity loss, and climate change in Timor-Leste. Focusing on a “landscape-to-seascape” approach, the project empowers communities by establishing an ecological matrix of climate-smart agroforestry and agrosilvofishery systems for resilience livelihoods. This will restore crucial habitat connectivity and prevent ecological disintegration beyond protected areas.

The project will address critical environmental and socio-economic challenges through four key outcomes:
• Enhanced Governance: We will establish new governance frameworks that integrate non-conservation areas, empowering stakeholders to manage resources cooperatively.
• Empowered Farmers: Farmers will be equipped with knowledge, skills, and resources, including a local nursery, to become stewards of agrobiodiversity.
• Green Enterprises: We will foster profitable, nature-based businesses by creating clear business plans and value chain analyses, directly addressing poverty.
• Broader Impact: Our findings will be documented as evidencebased policy recommendations for scalability across TimorLeste and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

Innovating through scientific modeling and inclusive partnerships, we will explore the potential for new Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) guided by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A core commitment to Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) ensures equitable access to resources and opportunities, ensuring the project’s long-term sustainability and impact.

Header Image: Forest canopies meet thriving agroforestry and agricultural fields in Aileu Municipality, Timor-Leste. Credit to Hikmah Fajar Assidiq

More on the project will be added soon. In the meantime, explore our Projects page to discover the diverse portfolio of initiatives GCBC is supporting around the world, and see where our research is making an impact.

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Agriculture Conservation and Restoration Governance Improving livelihoods

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The GCBC Research Grant Competition 3 (RGC3) Concept Note application has CLOSED

Published 04 Feb 2025

GCBC

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Agriculture Agroforestry Coastal Ecosystems Conservation and Restoration Food Systems Improving livelihoods Indigenous Peoples Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Natural Resource Management Nature based solutions Partnership Small Island Developing States Social Inclusion

The GCBC Opportunities Portal for Concept Note submissions for the Third Research Grant Competition (RGC3) CLOSED at 23:00 hrs UTC, on Sunday, 16 March, 2025. Any applications submitted after that time and date will not be accepted or considered for the full proposal stage.

The GCBC extends grateful thanks to all applicants who made submissions through the Opportunities Portal. We have been delighted with the responses to this grant call, particularly from the Global South.

Over the next few weeks we will be working through the applications, carrying out eligibility checks, technical evaluations, moderation and scientific meetings to establish the most suitable Concept Notes to take forward to the next round.

RGC3 Themes

The two research themes of this RGC3 are: 

Theme 1: Using biodiversity to improve the climate resilience of agricultural, food and bioeconomy value chains – Transforming agrifood systems at scale to incorporate nature-based solutions that build biodiversity back into production landscapes to boost climate resilience and reduce poverty (open to all GCBC focus regions).

Theme 2: Biodiversity hotspots in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) – Building sustainable businesses from nature to adapt to climate change, protect biodiversity, and tackle poverty (focused in SIDS).

The GCBC, a UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), aims to fund a mixed portfolio of up to twenty grants in RGC3, covering a range of topics and geographies across both themes. Grants sums of between £100,000 and £1 million are offered for projects of 12-36 months duration. 

The GCBC will accept proposals for projects with activities in GCBC-eligible countries in Latin America (including Central America), the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South-east Asia and the Pacific and Small Island Developing States. A list of GCBC eligible countries is available here. To be accepted for funding under the GCBC programme projects must demonstrate:

Fit to GCBC: All proposals need to address poverty alleviation and climate resilience, focusing on approaches that better value, protect, restore and sustainably manage biodiversity.

Fit to theme: Proposals must address research questions within one of the themes set out above.

GESI: All proposals must incorporate clear plans to factor in gender, equality and social inclusion from the outset.

R&D: Proposed work must meet the definition of research and development: creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge – including knowledge of humankind, culture and society – and to devise new applications of available knowledge (OECD, 2015).