Why large-scale land restoration?

Restoration is recognized as a priority by all of the countries of the Great Green Wall (GGW) in terms of intervention, due to the fact that it offers the dual benefit of biophysical, as well as socio-economic enhancement. In fact, it is estimated that 166 million hectares of the GGW core area are in need of restoration and 10 million hectares must be restored each year (Berrahmouni et al., 2016), in order to reach this target by 2030. Out of this total, GGW countries and international partners have pledged at the UNCCD COP 14 to restore 100 million hectares of degraded agro-sylvo-pastoral lands in the GGW by 2030. Moreover, African countries at the Paris climate summit in 2015 have committed substantial pledges for initiatives such as the AFR100 with the goal to also restore 100 million hectares in Africa by 2030.

The question however of how these numbers can feasibly be transformed into reality remains. How do we win the race against time? There is no miracle solution: restoration will require substantial investments, including equipment, restoration seeds and capacity development. In addition, it will require the support of the appropriate policies, governance mechanisms and financial assistance, as well as other incentives that facilitate the implementation of on-the-ground restoration interventions on a massive scale. 

Although many land restoration projects have been successful, other large-scale restoration projects implemented mainly in the drylands on a global scale have been less successful due to poor technical choices (species and seeds used, inappropriate nursery and planting techniques) as well as an ineffective top-down approaches. To address this issue, in 2015, FAO developed global guidelines on dryland restoration (Berrahmouni et al. 2015) that provide general recommendations for both practitioners as well as policy and decision-makers, in an effort to support restoration efforts in drylands. Small-scale or pilot initiatives have also been unable to address the restoration issue at the right scale and can no longer be the only answer. And while dryland communities have valuable traditional ecological knowledge and land management skills (such as the half-moon and Zaï techniques used in the Sahel), these techniques can be very demanding and do not suffice when confronted with rapid climate change (Sacande and Berrahmouni, 2016). 

Through the Action Against Desertification project, FAO has developed an innovative approach which combines enrichment planting of native woody and grass species with large-scale land preparation for rainwater harvesting and soil permeability. Enrichment planting to re-establish native species has proven to be a more effective method as opposed to natural regeneration, which tends to be very time-consuming or at times ineffective in severely degraded landscapes. In sum, this approach is a powerful tool for combating desertification and is often the only possible option for the restoration of large areas in rural/country side agro-sylvo-pastoral systems.

This approach has been tested in the field with good results through different GGW projects in different landscapes, ecosystems and countries. Several of its key contributing elements are:

• the use of high-quality restoration seeds and propagation material of well-adapted native species;
• the combined use of a mixture of grasses and woody species to maximize land cover;
• the use of mechanized land preparation techniques in order to reach the targeted scale;
• the participatory approach based on community needs and preferences for species and restoration objectives.