Regional projects

Africa
Creating lands of opportunity: transforming livelihoods through landscape restoration in the Sahel - 2019-2023

The goal of the Creating Lands of Opportunity project is to make a significant and sustainable contribution towards landscape restoration in the Sahel, and to create income-generating activities for local communities in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Niger. The project will benefit poor rural people through improvements in agricultural production, food security, livelihood development and climate change resilience by: 

  • restoring an estimated 20,000 hectares of degraded land
  • investing in landscape restoration in selected local communities in the Sahel
  • creating new sustainable sources of income, benefiting an estimated 300,000 people, including vulnerable groups such as young people and women

The next stage of the project will see training of local population on land degradation neutrality and land-based value-chain.

Total approved budget: USD 6,659,700

Regional Approaches for Drought risk management

A pilot project in SADC region

The project will provide initial support to Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe so they can manage drought in a collective manner. The regional approach will also help the region’s key stakeholders learn how put together a regional grant proposal to targeted donors.

Total approved budget: USD 220,000

Central Asia
Regional Approaches for Combating Sand and Dust Storms and Drought

A pilot project in Central Asia

This project will help Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan take the necessary steps to minimize the adverse effect of sand and dust storms and drought. The project outcome documents will also lay out a strategic vision for the Regional Environmental Programme for the Sustainable Development of Central Asia.

Total  approved budget: USD 588,000

National projects

Sustainable management of adjacent ecosystems of specially protected nature areas of the Republic of Armenia and capacity building in local communities

The objective of this project is to reduce the risk of climate change for communities living adjacent to Armenia’s protected areas. The project will strengthen the adaptive capacity of the agricultural  sector  and reinforce its capacity to adapt to climate change. This project has three goals:

  • implementation of community based, climate-smart agricultural practices in order to reduce the climate risk vulnerability of production systems, and to sustain protected areas
  • strengthen climate-smart agriculture value chains, and ensure climate-smart technologies are accessible to men and women living vulnerable rural communities
  • increase awareness of planning, monitoring and decision making capacities when it comes to climate-smart agriculture production methods and land degradation neutrality in general

Total approved budget: USD 2,506,000

Peatland Restoration in Belarus - Phase II, 2020-2022

The Peatland Restoration project in Belarus is funded by the UNCCD Greening Dryland Partnership and co-funded through the GEF Small grants programme. It aims to restore up to 4,000 hectares of degraded peatlands. Both phases of the project will contribute to:

  • Belarus reaching its LDN targets
  • mitigate against climate change
  • protect against wildfires, which will help conserve local biodiversity and contribute to economic recovery
  • generate eco-tourism revenue generation opportunities from berry collection

Total approved budget (Phase I and Phase II): USD 509,800

Implementation of Sustainable Land Management practices and capacity building in communities affected by land degradation

This project in Ecuador is Funded by UNCCD Greening Dryland Partnership. It will train local organizations and decision makers in agriculture, sustainable land management and water usage best practices. The ultimate aim of the project is to recover degraded areas.

Total approved  budget: USD 460,600

Cafe Selva Norte: Mitigate Land Degradation and Climate Change by empowering communities of small farmers via development agroforestry projects

The Cafe Selva Norte project aims to recover degraded land in Peru by setting up sustainable, productive coffee agroforestry systems. Comprising of 2,000 producers across more than 20,000 hectares, the project will strengthen cooperative production capacities and result in a number of economic and environmental benefits.

Total approved budget: USD 14.5 million

Contributing to Land Degradation Neutrality target setting by demonstrating the LDN approach in the upper Sakarya Basin for scaling up at national level

This project in Türkiye aims to develop a model for LDN target setting, planning and implementation in the Sakarya Basin in northwestern Türkiye. It is hoped that this model can then be replicated at a national level. The project will take a phased approach, which includes:

  • strengthening the enabling environment for LDN and multi-sectoral land-use planning processes in Türkiye
  • developing an LDN Decision Support System (DSS) that will first be applied in the Sakarya Basin
  • achieving LDN in the Sakarya Basin. The benefits of this are varied and include improved land cover, enhanced soil carbon and enhanced land productivity. The LDN-DSS will then be integrated into existing land-use planning and will be scaled-up to set targets at the national level.

Total approved budget: USD 15,988,584