Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change Project (PROEZA) Paraguay

The PROEZA project in Eastern Paraguay aims to combine social protection with climate action by implementing agroforestry systems and efficient stoves for vulnerable households. While the evaluation recognizes the project's innovative approach and its success in improving land tenure security, it finds that overall implementation is very low, with less than 5% of final targets for agroforestry plantations achieved. Major obstacles include weak project design, high personnel turnover, the COVID-19 pandemic, and an unattractive credit line for medium-sized landowners. The report highlights risks to sustainability due to low institutional ownership and a lack of clear future financing, and it recommends a revised roadmap with realistic targets and a strengthened exit strategy.

• The project is considered innovative for linking social protection with climate action, aligning with Paraguay's national priorities and climate commitments.
• Implementation progress is critically low; as of January 2024, only 643 hectares of agroforestry plantations have been established for 800 families, representing 5% of the final target of 13,941 hectares and 17,100 families.
• The project has successfully improved land tenure security, providing technical and legal support to 12% of current beneficiaries, exceeding the phase target of 10%.
• Project design was weak, partly because it was the first GCF project formulated by FAO, leading to unrealistic financial calculations and underestimated costs for agroforestry models and stoves.
• The use of external service providers for implementation has reduced beneficiary participation and ownership, and limited the ability to identify and correct environmental deficiencies in the field.
• Agroforestry models rely heavily on exotic eucalyptus species and conventional techniques that involve land clearing and agrochemicals, with insufficient attention to soil fertility and biodiversity.
• Component 2 has seen no concrete progress in planted areas because the PROFORESTAL credit line is unattractive to landowners due to long return-on-investment periods and high risk.
• The project has not yet delivered on its efficient stove targets due to delays in prototype finalization and doubts regarding the cultural acceptability of the proposed models.
• Institutional sustainability is rated low due to a lack of ownership by governance institutions and uncertainty regarding the public funds required to maintain the project after GCF funding ends.
• The project has effectively promoted gender equity and empowerment, as 80% of beneficiaries are women, and the project has updated its gender plan to address the needs of rural women.
• While the project ensures free, prior, and informed consent for Indigenous Peoples, it fails to integrate their traditional knowledge into the standardized agroforestry models.
• The Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMF) has been only partially implemented, with a failure to monitor soil fertility and a lack of specialists in environmental and social safeguards.
• The project's emissions reduction estimates are considered overly optimistic because they assume high growth rates for eucalyptus that are unlikely on the degraded lands selected for the project.

APA

Green Climate Fund (2024). Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change Project (PROEZA) Paraguay. https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/fp062-interim-evaluation-report-pub.pdf

Chicago

Green Climate Fund. Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change Project (PROEZA) Paraguay. 2024. https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/fp062-interim-evaluation-report-pub.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Green Climate Fund |title=Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change Project (PROEZA) Paraguay |date=October 2024 |url=https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/fp062-interim-evaluation-report-pub.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{greenclimatefund2024poverty, author = {{Green Climate Fund}}, title = {{Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change Project (PROEZA) Paraguay}}, institution = {Green Climate Fund}, year = {2024}, month = oct, url = {https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/document/fp062-interim-evaluation-report-pub.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }