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Unasylva on success of restoration efforts in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger "The intrinsic and complex links between people and the landscape in which they live is of critical importance when developing a restoration model.” FAO’s international journal on forestry Unasylva, issue 245, highlighting forest and landscape restoration as a [...]

"The intrinsic and complex links between people and the landscape in which they live is of critical importance when developing a restoration model.” FAO’s international journal on forestry Unasylva, issue 245, highlighting forest and landscape restoration as a key issue ahead of the Paris Climate Change Conference of December 2015, [...]

“We need to increase the resilience of agriculture livelihoods to climate shocks especially for small-scale farmers, pastoralists and forest dependent communities who are on the front lines of climate disasters,” said FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo at a high-level event on the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and [...]

On 17 August 2015, the Gambia component of Action Against Desertification has been validated by stakeholders from relevant institutions and organizations, paving the way for the implementation of the project’s land management practices to tackle land degradation and deforestation and improve resilience to climate change. [more...]

Brussels/Rome - The European Union (EU) and FAO in collaboration with the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) have launched a €41 million, 4.5-year programme to bolster sustainable land management and restore drylands and degraded lands in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.   The programme, named Action Against Desertification, is crucial [...]

The Great Green Wall initiative is hosting an international forum to build new partnerships and accelerate progress in tackling one of this century's defining development challenges - land degradation, desertification and drought.The forum will also take stock of the achievements and future challenges of the Great Green Wall for the [...]

In Africa, scientists are hard at work restoring land once rich with biodiversity and vegetation. Eleven countries in the Sahel-Sahara region—Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Senegal—have joined to combat land degradation and restore native plant life to the landscape.  In recent years, northern Africa [...]

When village people and local authorities in southern Niger won back over one hundred hectares of degraded land, they added one extra piece to a mosaic being laid across the Sahel and the Sahara aimed at tackling desertification and land degradation.Ibrahim Dan Ladi, a 47-year-old farmer from southern Niger, remembers [...]

Like most people living along the Sahel – the drylands between Africa’s tropical savannahs and the Sahara Desert – Mustafa Ba is all too familiar with the effects of desertification. Thanks to a combination of overgrazing and deforestation, he has watched the countryside around his Senegalese village, Mboula, turn into a [...]

Desertification in Africa's Sahel region may be driving a range of problems including terrorism. Gavin Haines investigates whether a project to reforest the region could help. Since French forces were deployed to Mali earlier this year, the Sahel has emerged as a new battleground in the so-called war on terror.  This semi-arid [...]