Sustainable management of dryland landscapes in Burkina Faso

Country overview

Burkina Faso’s drylands face multiple threats of habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, water resource degradation, overuse of natural resources, loss of soil nutrients, and bushfires. These threats stem from unsustainable agricultural practices, overgrazing of livestock, unsustainable forest management, weak governance and spatial planning, and lack of knowledge. Establishing sustainable dryland management at scale in Burkina Faso will require addressing numerous barriers, including weak capacities to implement a landscape approach to dryland management, weak conditions for dryland governance, lack of coordination in planning of restoration interventions, and disconnection between agro-sylvo-pastoral value chains and ecosystems.

How does the DSL-IP support Burkina Faso?

The project aims to achieve large-scale restoration of dryland landscapes and sustainable livelihoods in Burkina Faso through the adoption of sustainable land management practices by rural communities. The project will apply an inclusive, integrated landscape and value chain approach to reverse and prevent dryland ecosystem degradation, secure multiple environmental benefits and support resilient livelihoods across three dryland landscapes within the Northern, Central and Central-West administrative regions of Burkina Faso. Through extensive knowledge management, the project will also encourage community-riven adoption of effective approaches and best practices in areas adjacent to the three target landscapes.

The project is divided into three components:

• Component 1: Creating country-specific conditions for innovative and integrated approaches to dryland management. The project will strengthen governance and management platforms for land management and support the application of informed, integrated and gender-sensitive/responsive approaches to sustainable dryland restoration. The project’s three landscapes will be assessed using the participatory Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM); ten municipalities will develop gender-sensitive/responsive land use and restoration plans and strengthen their governance frameworks to guide management and restoration decisions; and dryland in at least ten localities will be restored by local communities. Component 1 will also progress the development of informed and inclusive ecovillages that contribute to reduced and avoided emissions of greenhouse gases through the integration of landscape approaches to dryland restoration and management.
• Component 2: Creating country-specific conditions and capacities for scaling-up. The project will strengthen inclusive, ecosystem-based value chains of important dryland agro-sylvo-pastoral products through improved understanding and the application of environmentally friendly, climate-smart and gender sensitive/responsive practices. The financial and human resource capacity for sustainable production will be improved through skills development, investment and partnerships between smallholders, their associations and private sector actors.
• Component 3: Project-specific knowledge management and M&E. The project will assure that results are monitored, and lessons learned are used to inform adaptive management and outreach to support replication and scaling up of best practices in sustainable dryland management at national, regional and global levels. Collaboration with the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative (GGWSSI) and the DSL IP will be leveraged to support regional and global knowledge management and contribute to impacts at the biome and ecoregion levels.

Project’s Target Contributions to GEF-7 Core Indicators