Program Summary

This Regional Program aims to regreen and restore land productivity and build climate resilience of the Sahel, most notably in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. The added value of the Program ensures that World Bank operations adopt a landscape approach towards restoration and rehabilitation, underpinned by updated analytics and use of new technologies. This program is especially important for post–COVID planning recovery in the region. The Program builds on ten years of experience of the Sahel and West Africa Program (SAWAP) and other programs to support the mainstreaming of country environmental commitments on landscapes into national policies and building on and improving existing tools for monitoring and spatial planning in the Sahel.

Challenge

Environmental degradation is a significant problem in the Sahel, with land degradation, climate change impacts and poverty inextricably linked. Temperatures in the Sahel are increasing 1.5 times faster than the global average. Strengthening the resilience of the Sahel to natural and economic shocks requires cross-sectoral integrated solutions and collaborative action at scale. It also requires coordination of planning and management decisions across a range of sectors and stakeholders, supportive policies and regulations, replication of good practice and strategies for scaling up, as well as communication efforts to inform and inspire positive action. This program will therefore, support country-specific needs and intervene at both the national and regional levels by convening knowledge, partnerships and leveraging financing.

Approach

This  Program  has two main components:

1. Supporting an enabling  environment  for  integrated landscape approaches through technical assistance, analytical work and capacity building.
2. Supporting the scaling up of land and restoration activities, as well as livelihood activities through targeted technical  assistance  and investments  in Burkina Faso.

The components support countries in adopting a landscape approach across the environment and climate, water, and agriculture nexus, to address growing pressures on land, water, and other resources to accommodate the needs of present and future generations. The approach facilitates the simultaneous framing of development and conservation goals and will aim to develop a common approach to planning, monitoring, communication, and knowledge  dissemination by using  existing  tools, such  as the  Geo-enabling  Initiative  for  Monitoring  and Supervision(GEMS), the IUCN Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM),and platforms (such as TerrAfrica, GGWI).

[Expected] Results

The expected long term impacts of the Program will be that land use management planning at the sub-basin and community level is undertaken in a manner that accounts for all uses, deforestation and biodiversity loss will be reduced, sustainable crop value chains will be increased, project interventions will be replicated in other landscapes level jurisdictions, and an increase in rural employment and income, and increase in agricultural production.