By Marie-Aude Even and Esha Singh
On day 1, IFAD co-financed a very engaging side event where scientists from ICRAF, ICRISAT and partners from IFAD, UNCCD, India IUCN discussed several approaches to apply research in development to scale-up land restoration to achieve ambitious LDN targets. The event contributed to COP14 in filling critical gaps in acknowledging drivers of degradation and rethinking restoration models to put farmers at the centre of land management and planning.
Leigh Ann Winowiecki from ICRAF first stated that participatory designs and embedding research in project design are crucial to scale restoration. Her presentation described innovative approaches empowering farmers to test and adapt various innovations on their fields to facilitate comparison of practices within farm, between farmers and communities. Such approaches provide a platform to scale solutions that are farmer-led and require locally adapted service delivery and multi-stakeholders engagement. This approach has been scaled-up in an IFAD and EU-funded project implemented in Niger, Mali, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Anthony Whitbread, from ICRISAT, emphasised land degradation as a crucial factor in the vicious poverty cycle. Scaling of innovations can be achieved by the implementation of planned comparisons to test restoration strategies such as farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) and other sustainable land management practices. Tenure rights are also crucial for restoration and bio-reclamation of degraded lands in Niger where over 10,000 empowered women obtained tenure rights and reclaimed 175 ha of degraded land.
Kaushal Garg (ICRISAT-India) highlighted a successful example on scaling watershed development with an example from Parasai-Singh in Uttar Pradesh, India that addressed water scarcity and governance through citizen participation, and convergence with government schemes. Tilahun Amede (ICRISAT-Ethiopia) further described a community based watershed management project in partnership with GIZ in Ethiopia which incorporated market incentives, local level collective actions such as move from household to community level large scale ponds, local capacity building and messaging such as "No Pond No Wife" to scale-up soil and water conservation activities.
While opening the panel discussion, Marie-Aude Even (IFAD) explained how IFAD promoted LDN through its loans and grants. She emphasised that IFAD notably promotes policy process and integrated approaches that can empower rural poor (e.g. participatory land use planning, secure land tenure rights, IAP-GEF programme etc.); develop capacities of research, extension and farmers organizations to document and scale sustainable land management practices within national policy process and LDN reporting (e.g. grant with wocat); and mobilize finances with other partners.
Other panel interventions included Aureile Lhumeau from the UNCCD’s Global Mechanism Team; and Susan Chomba, from ICRAF's Regreening Africa initiative; and Bora MASUMBUKO, Senior Programme Officer, Global Drylands Initiative IUCN Eastern & Southern Africa Regional Office. The panel stressed the need to learn from failures and address root causes of land degradation that include complex social and political factors, such as weak governance and insecure tenure rights. Solutions need to be beneficial to farmers, require contextual and adaptive management and collaborations across stakeholders, such as initiated along the IFAD-GEF IAP program. Global mechanisms can play a key role to strengthen national policy and programming efforts to facilitate such concentration.
The day ended with China transferring the presidency of the UNCCD COP14 to India. The new president (Prakash Javadekar, Minister of the MoEF&CC, India) of the COP emphasised the need to be optimistic and focus on ecosystem restoration and driving convergence and synergies among existing programmes. Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of COP14 highlighted several new reports, such as IPCC special report on climate change and land, the IPBES thematic assessment on land degradation and restoration and the UNCCD’s global land outlook to provide guidance to high level panels of the COP14.
On day 1, IFAD co-financed a very engaging side event where scientists from ICRAF, ICRISAT and partners from IFAD, UNCCD, India IUCN discussed several approaches to apply research in development to scale-up land restoration to achieve ambitious LDN targets. The event contributed to COP14 in filling critical gaps in acknowledging drivers of degradation and rethinking restoration models to put farmers at the centre of land management and planning.
Leigh Ann Winowiecki from ICRAF first stated that participatory designs and embedding research in project design are crucial to scale restoration. Her presentation described innovative approaches empowering farmers to test and adapt various innovations on their fields to facilitate comparison of practices within farm, between farmers and communities. Such approaches provide a platform to scale solutions that are farmer-led and require locally adapted service delivery and multi-stakeholders engagement. This approach has been scaled-up in an IFAD and EU-funded project implemented in Niger, Mali, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Anthony Whitbread, from ICRISAT, emphasised land degradation as a crucial factor in the vicious poverty cycle. Scaling of innovations can be achieved by the implementation of planned comparisons to test restoration strategies such as farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) and other sustainable land management practices. Tenure rights are also crucial for restoration and bio-reclamation of degraded lands in Niger where over 10,000 empowered women obtained tenure rights and reclaimed 175 ha of degraded land.
Kaushal Garg (ICRISAT-India) highlighted a successful example on scaling watershed development with an example from Parasai-Singh in Uttar Pradesh, India that addressed water scarcity and governance through citizen participation, and convergence with government schemes. Tilahun Amede (ICRISAT-Ethiopia) further described a community based watershed management project in partnership with GIZ in Ethiopia which incorporated market incentives, local level collective actions such as move from household to community level large scale ponds, local capacity building and messaging such as "No Pond No Wife" to scale-up soil and water conservation activities.
While opening the panel discussion, Marie-Aude Even (IFAD) explained how IFAD promoted LDN through its loans and grants. She emphasised that IFAD notably promotes policy process and integrated approaches that can empower rural poor (e.g. participatory land use planning, secure land tenure rights, IAP-GEF programme etc.); develop capacities of research, extension and farmers organizations to document and scale sustainable land management practices within national policy process and LDN reporting (e.g. grant with wocat); and mobilize finances with other partners.
Other panel interventions included Aureile Lhumeau from the UNCCD’s Global Mechanism Team; and Susan Chomba, from ICRAF's Regreening Africa initiative; and Bora MASUMBUKO, Senior Programme Officer, Global Drylands Initiative IUCN Eastern & Southern Africa Regional Office. The panel stressed the need to learn from failures and address root causes of land degradation that include complex social and political factors, such as weak governance and insecure tenure rights. Solutions need to be beneficial to farmers, require contextual and adaptive management and collaborations across stakeholders, such as initiated along the IFAD-GEF IAP program. Global mechanisms can play a key role to strengthen national policy and programming efforts to facilitate such concentration.
The day ended with China transferring the presidency of the UNCCD COP14 to India. The new president (Prakash Javadekar, Minister of the MoEF&CC, India) of the COP emphasised the need to be optimistic and focus on ecosystem restoration and driving convergence and synergies among existing programmes. Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of COP14 highlighted several new reports, such as IPCC special report on climate change and land, the IPBES thematic assessment on land degradation and restoration and the UNCCD’s global land outlook to provide guidance to high level panels of the COP14.