DISCUSSION OVERVIEW

Welcome to the TerrAfrica online discussion on sustainable land management and climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa, running parallel to the UNCCD COP9.

The numbers set the challenge:

• 430 million Africans rely on the land for their livelihood, yet 67% of the land area is already affected by degradation
• water and wind erosion deplete 40% of rain-fed lands, whilst salination or waterlogging affect 20% of irrigated fields
• 4 million t of nutrients are harvested and only 1 million t are returned each year
• deforestation is ongoing at 3.7 million ha per year
• compared to the previous decade, the annual frequency of disaster events has trebled since the year 2000
• climate warming will see changes to rainfall patterns with shorter growing seasons and a decline in the area suitable for crops to decrease food production by up to 50% in some countries
• population pressures continue to increase everywhere

These numbers mean things to all stakeholders from policy makers to rural communities; although not always the same things. And it is instructive to find out a little more about what these challenges mean to us all.

But numbers do not solve the problem.

People do that through their ingenuity, cooperation and ability to invest in real solutions.  We know that there are benefits of sustainable land management (SLM) that will help production systems to adapt and better withstand changing times; and even to provide mitigation by sequestering carbon in agricultural lands.

Yet we are not always sure how best to encourage the uptake of SLM technologies and practices to each setting when those settings scale across regions, countries, districts to each farmers field. And we sometimes find it difficult to align policies and mechanisms that will support uptake.

For this we need more ideas, ingenuity, cooperation and ability to invest in SLM solutions that will begin to reverse the numbers.

This online discussion is an opportunity for all stakeholders to engage in one conversation that can help to find solutions.

Our online debate will run alongside the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 21 September to 2 October 2009 as a place to offer ideas, opinion and solutions to the challenge of SLM and climate change in Africa.

On each day of the conference our experienced keynote speakers who have been grappling with the SLM and climate change issue in government, development agencies, science and business will provide stimulating comment on this topic.

Follow their thoughts and contribute your own through the comment section.

For myself as moderator, I’m looking forward to the ideas from our participants and to the discussion that their contributions will generate. I will referee only when there is a need and try to keep the game flowing. It’s a tough job and I’m grateful for a decade spent working on natural resource management in Zimbabwe and Botswana to help me understand when I might need to blow the whistle. Please support me by being forthright but respectful in your responses.

Please read and contribute, the success of engagement needs your input.

The financing of SLM initiatives has always been a challenge.

The debates around the traditional routes for financial flows within countries and across borders are well known – proponents and providers each with their own valid reasons for sourcing or controlling ever-thinner slices of a relatively small pie.

We may have to accept that, although important, the donor dollar will always be a weak process – a little like spray irrigation, not enough of the good stuff soaks into the ground.

The great opportunity for SLM is that this may all change. Climate change brings with it carbon finance and with that the notion that other environmental services could be financial vehicles. The land makes money over and above the products it produces.

We could see carbon, water, biodiversity, even nutrient replenishment as tradable stocks and a big part of the asset value of land.

The question is how will it change and what mechanisms and institutions will need to emerge to access and channel funding to SLM initiatives? This is unknown, although many people, including some of the expert contributors to this debate, are starting to make it happen.

So, do we see climate change as an opportunity or a threat? That surely is one for the financial minds… or is it?

Mark

I believe there is now real consensus to invest in sustainable land management (SLM) as a means of combating land degradation in the context of food security, and in the face of global climate change.

Clearly, any financing discussion must start with the fact that it is not a simple matter of lack of funding.

Land is an asset worth investing in at all levels. SLM is a development priority because it underpins agriculture (food and fiber crops), rangeland management (livestock), and forest landscape management (wood and fuel) and improved the value and longevity of this asset. Viewed in this way, SLM is the foundation for natural resource uses that drive much of the rural economy in developing countries.

So financing SLM should be considered a genuine economic and development agenda by all countries. But how can we make it happen?

First, governments must create the enabling environment and climate for diversity of investment in SLM. Incentives and opportunities for SLM cannot be harnessed if existing policies or investment climates are not conducive. For example, insecure land tenure has been shown to serve as a major impediment to SLM.

Simple solutions such as empowering local land users with secure tenure, will create incentives for SLM because they will focus on interventions with great potential for long-term sustainability. It is therefore essential that developing countries increasingly facilitate such enabling environments if the growing prospect of funding for climate change mitigation and adaptation is to effectively tapped.

Second, financing for SLM should come from a diversified range of sources, including reflows from production practices. This means harnessing opportunities across a range of sectors, especially those that depend on ecosystem service flows.

Payments for ecosystem services such as hydrological flows and carbon sequestration are being tapped in different parts of the world to foster prudent and judicious use of production landscapes. Much more needs to be done to develop and institutionalize such options.

Third, global financing mechanisms such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) should be strengthened to play a crucial role in fostering SLM by leveraging mainstream development funding. The GEF as a financing mechanism of multi-lateral environmental agreements has the comparative advantage of financing incremental costs to generate global environmental benefits from mainstream development projects. For example, GEF financing for SLM helps to increase resiliency of agriculture and rangeland systems by emphasizing innovations to maintain or improve ecosystem service flows.

The UNCCD and its 10-Year Strategy offers an exciting global policy backdrop to explore these options by both developed country and affected country partners.

And now is the time to take full advantage of the opportunity before it is too late!

My name is Ephraim Nkonya from IFPRI. Regarding financing of SLM and climate change adaptation and mitigation, the discussion in Buenos Aires pointed to the need for partnership between developing and developed countries in financing SLM and climate change adaptation and mitigation. My major concern is on the limited participation of SSA countries in the carbon market, which has largely been due to the miriad of constraints facing the region. Sarah can say more about this.

I think there is a need of raising the SLM profile in the region by informing the policy makers of the large losses that SSA economies suffer through land degradation and therefore the need to invest more in SLM. Current public investment in soil fertility management has been largely on fertilizer subsidy. Investment in organic soil fertility management – such as agroforestry, soil erosion control, etc have largely been funded by donors. This is where there is need to raise the profile of SLM to get policy makers attention. This will definitely pay dividends if SSA countries start investing in promoting organic soil fertility management rather than the current focus on fertilizer subsidy. Doing so will be more effective in adaptation to climate change, and raise the profile for participating in the carbon market.

The last few days we have heard that

• There is a need for consolidation and communication of SLM information perhaps through a virtual network that uses new media solutions
• The grass roots are where the decisions will be made with farmers not necessarily aware of the link between their current environmental problems and their current or past actions
• There is a disjunction between the research, extension, policy and investment people that might be bridged with shared data platforms, shared indicators, country peer-review and a communications effort
• Engagement with the farmer is critical, would identify the key barriers that once removed would see a rapid uptake of SLM tactics on the farm

It seems as though we might be aware of the problems that SLM aims to solve at all levels (the scale issue that seems always to be part of such discussions) but depending on our experience we see the problems in a particular way.

I know that my former academic colleagues in soil and ecological research see the problem of sustainability very differently when they are thinking about their experiments and fieldwork, to when they are in the coffee room at the University, to when they are writing the next research grant application.

No surprise that they also think differently to the extension officer, the policy maker, investor and farmer.

Are our ways of thinking too disparate to bring together?

Mark
1 October, 2009