Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN) - TerraFund Verification Results

Project Snapshot

In the heart of Southwestern Uganda lies the Rwoho Central Forest Reserve, a rich ecosystem that safeguards dozens of native tree species, rare birds, butterflies, and mammals. But as the population of the surrounding landscape has grown, so has demand for timber and charcoal. Since 2000, the forest has lost 30% of its tree cover, with devastating consequences for this natural wonder.

In 2022, TerraFund financed Support for Women in Agriculture and Environment (SWAGEN), a community-based organization founded by grassroots women leaders, to work with communities to restore the forest. SWAGEN strengthens local women's groups to grow trees in and around the Reserve and conserve biodiversity.

SWAGEN's goal was to restore 200 hectares of forest and farmland by planting 222,200 trees, using a mix of species that both repair the ecosystem and provide food and new sources of income like honey. It's simple: When people make money from the healthy forest, they are less likely to cut it down.

Community is at the heart of SWAGEN's model. The locally rooted organization mobilizes, trains, and pays community leaders to plant trees, maintain healing ecosystems, and prevent deforestation. SWAGEN reported that it employed 22,224 people, of which 80% were youth. While SWAGEN reported this significant figure before WRI refined its data collection methods, a site visit confirmed SWAGEN's deep engagement with local communities and the labor-intensive nature of its work.

Verified Results

The Target

Metric	Target	Reported
Trees Planted	222,200	199,649
Survival Rate	96%	98%
Trees Grown	195,656

The Analysis

The Results

Metric	Verified Result
Trees in March 2022	15,324
Trees in October 2024	86,446
Verified New Trees	71,122

WRI selected SWAGEN's project to test how to collect and analyze data on the recovery of a partially degraded and partially healthy forest ecosystem.

SWAGEN's self-reported data indicates that the project reached 90% of its target, planting 199,649 trees. WRI then applied its AI-powered tree count methodology, powered by the DINOv2 computer vision model, to independently verify the reported data.

Because not all planted trees survive, WRI verifies the number of “trees grown” rather than trees planted by multiplying the project’s reported survival rate by the total number of trees planted. Based on SWAGEN’s reported survival rate of 98%, WRI anticipated that 195,656 trees would have survived in the 2.5 years after planting began. That became the target.

Across TerraFund projects that restore natural forests, survival rates typically average between 70% and 80%. Early projects reported survival rates in excess of 90%, based on the expectations of previous donors that expect trees to survive but under-invest in monitoring technologies.

To test that high survival rate, SWAGEN and WRI collect 14 separate geospatial project boundaries, known as "polygons," that enclosed the 169 hectares of land where community members had planted trees in and around the forest. WRI then examined high-resolution satellite imagery for the entire area to assess overall change in the number of trees growing across the project.

Comparing imagery before the project started to 2.5 years after planting began, WRI's analysis detected a net increase of 71,122 trees, only 36% of the projected target. In every polygon, however, there were more trees than when the project started.

These findings represent early insights into the project's long-term outcomes. Forest ecosystems mature gradually, and monitoring will continue for three more years until the trees are fully mature.

WRI's Assessment

What’s Working

SWAGEN’s project is a successful example of community-led forest restoration, mobilizing large numbers of people to plant trees and care for protected forests. Due to an abundance of high-quality satellite imagery, the AI data could easily count trees in each polygon. Because the number of trees increased in every polygon, the data provides strong evidence that SWAGEN's work is leading to positive outcomes for the forest.

What's Challenging

Comparing self-reported restoration results with satellite verification can reveal discrepancies that require careful interpretation. In this case, the project has only achieved 36% of its target after 2.5 years of implementation. Why might that be the case?

First, the project likely overestimated its projected survival rate and the number of saplings it could plant within each hectare of forest. Now, WRI and projects jointly set targets to ensure the number of trees grown, survival rate, and people employed are appropriate to the ecosystem and landscape. Planting more trees or employing more people isn't always better.

Second, native saplings grow more slowly and are more likely to die than exotic species. And in forests, seedlings are often planted under the tree canopy to improve biodiversity. As a result, satellites sometimes can't count every young tree. Now, WRI asks for more detail on where and how trees are planted to determine whether satellite verification is technically feasible and, if it's not, sends a crew to the field to verify the number of trees.

Third, WRI's initial analysis showed that many TerraFund projects planted immediately outside the project boundaries they submitted in 2022 and 2023. When asked to recollect location data, many implementers couldn't due to high transportation costs or other obligations. Now, WRI requires local organizations to collect and submit geospatial boundaries during the planting season to ensure every site is counted.

Pathway to Scale

Complex projects like SWAGEN's are common in and around Africa's degraded forest reserves. These insights help inform how restoration programs like TerraFund can improve project design, monitoring, and reporting and challenges them to find technical solutions rather than force implementers to adapt their successful models. Technical experts at organizations like WRI can also provide clearer guidance on how to set restoration targets, make realistic assumptions about the number of trees that can be planted in a forest reserve, and consistently report survival rate to reduce discrepancies between reported and verified results. In turn, that can lead to more accurate insights for project implementers and their financiers.

_{Cover image credit: SWAGEN/TerraFund}