The World Environment Day 2024 will focus on the critical theme of “Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience’. The theme aligns with the urgent call for action to restore degraded landscapes, protecting essential ecosystem services. Land restoration is a pivotal aspect of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), contributing significantly to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 15).
A case in point for this action is that land use and land degradation - ranked as the most pressing trans-boundary environmental issue in the Lake Victoria basin (one of the world’s most densely populated areas), according to the LakeVictoria Basin Commission’s Strategic Plan (2021-26). Land degradation has been recognized as a basin wide problem referring to decline in the overall quality of soil or vegetation condition commonly caused by human activities. The poor are impacted in a number of ways including reduced agricultural yields, higher energy prices, loss of future incomes and reduced access to lands. Soil erosion leads to land degradation. Also, the conversion of forests and wetlands into agricultural or urban lands affects water flow in rivers and increase siltation thus affecting hydro power generation and creates power outages that push up energy prices. In the past four decades, over 70% of the forest cover in the catchment area has been lost, about 75% of wetland area has been significantly affected by human activities and about 13% is severely degraded.
Therefore, this year’s theme on Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience, is a plain reminder of what has gone wrong as evidenced in the above challenges and the increased occurrence of unfamiliar extreme weather conditions that have resulted in loss of lives and property across East Africa. When land is poorly managed, unfavorable weather conditions like el Niño find a ‘soft’ landing to worsen environmental degradation including land degradation through flash floods and loss of soil productivity due to droughts. A clear starting point is therefore urgently needed to scale up land restoration efforts in this region.
A viable start is for East African Partner States to prioritize the implementation of their National Climate Plans (Nationally Determined Contribution – NDC) especially climate change adaptation. Under the Paris Agreement, each Party is required to establish an NDC (updated every five years with ambition in mind). For example, in Rwanda’s Plan, agriculture is prioritized in terms of developing sustainable land use management practices, expanding irrigation and improve water management; while in the land and forestry sector, focus is on development of agroforestry and sustainable agriculture, promoting afforestation / reforestation of designated areas, improving forest management for degraded forest resources, harmonized and integrated spacial data management system for sustainable land use, and inclusive land administration that regulate and provide guidance for land tenure security.
On agriculture, Tanzania’s Climate Plan seeks to up scale the level of improvement of agricultural land and water resources management, increase productivity in an environmentally sustainable way through, inter alia, climate-smart agriculture interventions and to promote accessible mechanisms for smallholder farmers against climate related shocks, including crop insurances and strengthening knowledge systems, extension services and agricultural infrastructure to target climate actions, including using climate services and local knowledge.
While similar actions are also present in the Uganda’s and Kenya’s national Climate Plans, it is time a coherent regional climate plan under guidance of either the East African Community (EAC) or The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is generated to concretely address the rapidly growing borderless climate change challenge that is a key contributor to desertification and drought in East and the Horn of Africa. This will simultaneously enable focused implementation of other global commitments under Agenda 2030 (SDG15), Africa 2063 of the African Union, the UN Convention on Drought and Desertification and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for which East African Countries are Party. Nonetheless Community Driven Development (CDD) sub-projects with a focus on livelihood improvement are potential movers to address Land Restoration, Desertification, and Drought Resilience.
Read this and other articles in the EA SusWatch INFORSE East Africa Ebulletin (May 2024) from here
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