Africa
Area: 30,370,000 km²
Africa is particularly vulnerable to land degradation and desertification, and it is the most severely affected region. Desertification affects around 45% of Africa’s land area, with 55% of this area at high or very high risk of further degradation.
Sustainable land management practices and their upscaling in Sub-Saharan Africa are essential for a variety of reasons – but the most basic is to sustain and improve livelihoods while protecting the land’s resources and ecosystem functions.
Estimates suggest the benefits of taking action against land degradation and desertification to outweigh the cost by almost 7 times.
(ELD Africa Report, 2015)
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Africa Report (2015)
Title: The Economics of Land Degradation in Africa. Benefits of Action Outweigh the Costs
Authors: Gelaye M. T., Mungatana E., Singh A., Apindi E., Barr J., Zommers Z., Lund G.
Main findings: The ELD analysis across 42 countries of Africa show that soil erosion induces the loss of about 280 million tons of cereal crops per year from about 105 million hectares of croplands. Taking action against this degradation over the next 15 years could generate benefits of about USD 62.4 billion per year in net present value. -
ReGreening Africa
The Project Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-up EverGreen Agriculture (short: Regreening Africa) started in 2017. It aims to improve livelihoods, food security and climate change resilience by restoring ecosystem services. Target countries were Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, and Somalia. ELD's work package under the project closed end of 2020.
The project is co-financed by the European Commission and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and carried out jointly by the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).