Is Norway funding forest preservation in Africa a positive either economically or environmentally?

Last week The Globe and Mail reported on Norway working to fight deforestation:

For inspiration, look to Norway, which has a pleasing habit of nixing the purely ideological and going for the practical. At the climate change summit in New York last September, when leaders from government, business and civil society met to “galvanize and catalyze climate action”—the UN’s words to describe a process that pretty much did the opposite—little Norway was busy doing a deal with little Liberia. It will see Norway pay Liberia up to $150 million (all currency in U.S. dollars) to stop the rapid destruction of its ample forests. The amount is a fortune for the West African country, a perennial economic basket case with a gross domestic product of less than $2 billion and practically no money to fight the Ebola crisis.
... Norway’s Liberia deal is not unique. The Norwegians have been swapping bucks for forestry preservation for years through the UN-REDD Programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

Compare to another article on Norway which dealt primarily with travel to the country but also touched on its agricultural policy:

Another factor is the high tariffs on agricultural imports that keep Norwegian farms in business: “We have perhaps the most protected agricultural system in the world,” he said. “It’s not a particularly easy place to grow anything. Farms are small and the season is short.”
That may mean higher food prices, but at least you are buying local.

If looking to help the developing world, it's worth thinking about the implications of those agricultural subsidies:

Subsidized agriculture in the developed world is one of the greatest obstacles to economic growth in the developing world. In 2002, industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) spent a total of $300 billion on crop price supports, production payments and other farm programs. These subsidies encourage overproduction. Markets are flooded with surplus crops that are sold below the cost of production, depressing world prices. Countries with unsubsidized goods are essentially shut out of world markets, devastating their local economies. Moreover, farm subsidies lead to environmental harm in rich and poor nations alike.
Prosperous countries give about $50 billion to $55 billion annually in foreign aid to underdeveloped nations. If developed nations reduced their subsidies and eliminated trade barriers - such as import tariffs protecting domestic producers from international competition - this aid would arguably be unnecessary and rural poverty might be significantly reduced.

It's worth noting that Norway's seemingly highly-intensive farming made feasible through those subsidies suggests that its likely using relatively environmentally destructive modes of farming, whereas Norway removing the barriers keeping foreign agriculture out would seem to enable countries like Liberia to improve their agricultural economy and possibly enable less destructive modes of farming to be using.

The article does mention that this program is hoped to stop the destruction of Liberian forests but I wonder whether Norway might accomplish that same environmental goal by returning some of its own seemingly-low-productive land to forest.