Sustainable land management

Today the process of land degradation appears to be on an unprecedented scale in sub-Saharan Africa. According to some estimates, nearly two-thirds of the productive land area in Africa is affected by a progressive dynamic of degradation with its corollary desertification.

Land degradation is all the more keenly felt in sub-Saharan Africa as the level of development is so heavily dependent on natural resources. In a context of rapid population growth (3% per year), the amplification of the process of land degradation calls into question ecological functions and services whose effects have an impact on rural communities and ecosystem services. It poses a threat to the availability of natural resources and to livelihoods.

This situation has raised awareness of the issue of sustainable land management, which has led to mobilization for the establishment of mechanisms likely to guarantee a concerted management of the problems posed by land degradation. In this perspective, for ENDA Energie, sustainable land management (SLM) is part of a global strategy to fight poverty, where communities are placed at the heart of the strategy of soil restoration and protection of the ecosystems in which they must know how to derive their livelihood without destroying them. It is thus made up of a whole set of practices, technologies and tools which make it possible to increase the average productivity of agro-systems, to diversify production, to improve incomes, while ensuring the long-term availability of natural resources. It thus consists in preventing the degradation of resources - including coping with climate change, and in enhancing the resilience of communities and ecosystems.

In its strategy, ENDA Energie puts the emphasis on the one hand on the inclusive territorial approach involving all local actors, and on the other hand on the sector-based approach which aims to promote value chains and access to natural resources market with high labor potential. The mobilization of communities and local authorities allows the development of the potential of the land such as livestock, (milk, meat, skins, etc.), agroforestry (gum trees, Balanites Aegyptiaca, Zyziphus Mauritania), agro-ecology with multipurpose gardens, crafts, fish farming, etc.

 It is in this respect that ENDA Energie recommends and works towards mainstreaming sustainable management of natural resources, land, and ecosystem risks in development plans at the local level, and their implementation through the setting up of innovative and multi-actor partnerships including local authorities, public and private sectors, as well as communities. This approach makes it possible to create partnership frameworks for communities and economic actors in the process of transformation towards sustainable development which has a strong impact according to the socio-economic contexts.

The initiatives implemented within the framework of SLM today allow ENDA Energie to rely on a catalog of good practices to maintain advocacy campaigns at national and international level - including on land degradation neutrality (LDN) - and to change scale.