Is it possible to live sustainably in the sahel

Unlocking private sector investment and support for restoration has been historically challenging. Market-creation enabling public policies, decentralized governance structure guaranteeing local community ownership, efficient and effective monitoring and clear land tenure rights arguably all play a critical role of favouring investments into products of the Sahel. Private-sector players can harness three opportunities now to increase both the supply and demand for investable projects:.

Investment through carbon finance. The Great Green Wall has a soil carbon sequestration potential of million tonnes by With companies around the world stepping up their climate commitments, demand for high-integrity carbon offsetting, particularly for nature-based solutions such as agroforestry, are surging.

New standards for measuring soil carbon are allowing the carbon certification of improved agricultural land management, which can contribute to scaling up the current flow of carbon finance into climate-smart agriculture in the Sahel. Scale innovative investment funds and accelerator programs for agroforestry SMEs. The challenge is even higher for ecopreneurs seeking to deliver social and environmental returns alongside financial returns, operating in an often poorly understood region such as the Sahel.

Over the past decade, a number of funds have emerged that seek to fill that gap faced by ecopreneurs in the Sahel. Further scaling such vehicles will allow for pooling of various types of private sector finance and help overcome transaction costs linked to investment in individual projects.

Support and empower an ecopreneurship movement. For such new investment vehicles to be able to deploy funds at scale into the Sahel, the region needs many more investable restoration projects to emerge. While traditional project-based technical assistance plays a key role, so does the inspiration and empowerment of a whole generation of youth leaders to become ecopreneurs and join the restoration movement. The destruction of forests creates almost as much greenhouse gas emissions as global road travel, and yet it continues at an alarming rate.

In , we brought together more than partners working in Latin America, West Africa, Central Africa and South-East Asia — to establish the Tropical Forest Alliance : a global public-private partnership to facilitate investment in systemic change.

The Alliance, made up of businesses, governments, civil society, indigenous people, communities and international organizations, helps producers, traders and buyers of commodities often blamed for causing deforestation to achieve deforestation-free supply chains.

Setbacks such as the Covid pandemic and political instability will no doubt arise. But the Sahel deserves more and can give more — to its citizens and to the world. A hopeful and dynamic narrative is a vital step for the region to deliver on its potential. We need the world to hear it. With Therefore, investments in education and vocational training could yield huge demographic dividends. The Sahel is also endowed with enormous renewable energy potential; it has more solar energy production capacity than other regions of the world.

The macroeconomic conditions in the Sahel have been steadier and stronger than the continental average over the past decade. The Sahel is endowed with great potential for renewable energy and sits atop some of the largest aquifers on the continent. Potentially one of the richest regions in the world with abundant human, cultural and natural resources Source.

Despite the enormous potential of the Sahel, the region remains gripped by humanitarian crisis as a result of insecurity and natural disasters, leaving millions in need of international assistance and protection. The overarching goal of the UN Support Plan for the Sahel is to scale up efforts to accelerate shared prosperity and lasting peace in the Sahel countries and the region at-large by implementing priorities to achieve the Agenda for sustainable development and the African Union Agenda What are the main challenges facing the Sahel?

One of the biggest constraints in the region is the lack of electricity. However, with the abundant sunlight and the wind all year round, we can create renewable energy almost everywhere in the Sahel. In some cases it could be off-grid solutions, and in other cases it can be on-grid solutions, meaning that we generate energy, transfer it to the national grid and distribute it to reduce dependence on fossil fuel. Under the Paris Agreement on climate change, countries are required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

We need to generate energy that can transform economies in the Sahel. For example, fishing products can be processed locally, creating value-added jobs for the local youth. Although pastoralism can pose a challenge due to the frequent conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the region, at the same time, there is plenty of fresh beef, even halal, exported from the Sahel to such places as the Middle East and North Africa. Background information: Why the Sahel Support Plan?

For this reason, the United Nations has come up with a unique support plan targeting 10 countries namely Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cameroon, to scale up efforts to accelerate prosperity and sustainable peace in the region.

The support plan highlights the enormous opportunities in the Sahel and its vast assets in natural resources, energy, tourism and culture; and is aimed at mobilizing public resources and triggering private investments in the 10 countries in support of ongoing efforts and initiatives by governments, international and regional organizations, and other partners, is built around the following six priority areas:.

Cross-border cooperation ii. Prevention and sustaining peace iii. Inclusive growth iv. Climate action v. Renewable energy vi. Women and youth empowerment.

It will bring coherence, improve coordination and strengthen collaboration with all partners in the region, including national and regional institutions, bilateral and multilateral organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations, to work towards operationalizing and implementing the Security Council resolutions on the Sahel.

Women, youth and job creation will cut across all priority areas and interventions, aiming at strengthening governance, improving security and building resilience, as well as promoting a more integrated approach to address the humanitarian-security-development nexus as a strategy to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.

The Great Green Wall as a potential game-changer in the Sahel. It is a multibillion-dollar initiative involving a range of stakeholders including national governments, international organizations, the business sector, and civil society. The GGW is designed to enable these actors to collectively manage natural resources in the Sahel region from Senegal to Djibouti. Finally, there is now a window of opportunity to rethink development actions in the region as there is a consensus that business-as-usual development efforts are ineffective, and where the concept of resilience becoming increasingly embraced in the high-level discourse of development agendas.

The Great Green Wall and G5. With a population of over million and a rising trend of urbanization, the Sahel region offers huge opportunities for its populations. At the same time, however, the region is facing an increase in extremism, terrorism and criminality, fueled by endemic poverty, high income inequality, a high rate of youth unemployment and governance deficiencies. ILO alliance with G5 Sahel.

The Sahel, one of the poorest regions in the world, is vulnerable to crises and insecurity. In this zone of transition between the desert and humid tropical Africa, the food economy employs two thirds of the population. How can Sahelian agriculture innovate and develop to meet the vital needs of a growing population in the face of climatic hazards? In this context, how can Sahelian agriculture develop to provide a source of food, jobs and income, as well as preserve its natural resources?

Water management is a major issue for agriculture, as well as for food and nutritional security for populations in the Sahel. Large rivers, including the Senegal, Niger, Logone and Chari rivers, and lakes, such as Lake Chad, cross the region, which is divided into three distinct zones: the Sahelo-Saharan zone annual rainfall - mm in the north, the typical Sahelian zone - mm and the Sudan-Sahel zone mm in the south.

A succession of agro-sylvo-pastoral zones extends from the north to the south with different crops, including maize and cotton in zones with the highest rainfall and sorghum, groundnut, cowpea and millet in zones with the lowest rainfall. Pastoralism is omnipresent and livestock mobility is high, since herders move south with their animals in search of food in the dry season.

This secular transhumance has always been a source of rivalry with farmers when it comes to access to resources water, grazing areas, transhumance corridors. The conflicts are now escalating: climate disruption is forcing livestock further south and more land is being used for crop production as a result of population growth.

Read more from Source. The first driver of development, which underpins all the others, is education and training for the million young people who will enter the job market by , at a rate of 30 million every year! The challenge for the Sahel and more broadly for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will be to provide them with jobs and income. The goal is to build the capacities of research institutions, but also of professional and non-governmental organisations.

We also seek to contribute to modernising vocational training by promoting research findings. Innovation processes are one research area, but some projects go as far as supporting the creation of innovative companies. We are constantly working to ensure a continuum between knowledge and innovation production and training, which is a key driver of impact and development. But it is also important to foster high value added sectors and markets. A particular concern is promoting products from pastoralism, especially milk.

These include the management of conflicts between sedentary farmers and nomadic herders. The aim is to build an international platform for cooperation in favour of development in the Sahel, to enable more numerous and more efficient operations. The Sahel Alliance should enable more efficient coordination of initiatives, and aims to improve the support provided by development partners in the region. To this end, the Sahel Alliance works in six priority sectors: youth employment, rural development and food security , energy and climate, governance, decentralization, access to basic services, and security.

Population pressure, climate change and a rise in conflicts raise huge issues for countries in the Sahel. One of the main challenges is training and providing jobs for young people. The food economy, which already employs two people in three, is one of the most promising sectors.

Agriculture will be key. Severe droughts, climate variability … the Sahel has been suffering the whims of the climate for decades. Farmers have had to adapt by using innovative systems and not just technologies, paving the way for the latest approach: climate-smart agriculture. The climate change factor has also been integrated into agricultural policies, which is vital if those policies are to be effective. To better coordinate the work of the UN system and to facilitate the cooperation between the 30 different agencies working in the Sahel region, the Secretary General on 21 March has appointed Mr.

Since Mr. For more information please visit Source. AfCFTA would not only boost African trade, particularly intraregional trade in manufacturing, but also increase intra-continental exports by 81 per cent and to non-African countries by 19 per cent.

The African Continental Free Trade Area has the potential to increase employment opportunities and incomes. But achieving its full potential will depend on putting in place significant policy reforms and trade facilitation measures. The creation of the AfCFTA regional market is a major opportunity to help African countries diversity their exports and accelerate growth. The report aims to raise awareness on the need for effective natural resource management by African governments to achieve lower-carbon economies.

In addition to contributing to land degradation , the typical partial combustion of fuelwood emits carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon and is a major cause of indoor air pollution, with damaging health effects. Fuelwood scarcity, coupled with efforts to make alternative fuels more widely available, is expected to result in a switch away from wood use, especially in urban areas.

Since , only seven million people have gained access to clean cooking options in SSA , meaning that the number of people without access increased to over million in as population growth outpaced provision efforts. Furthermore, it is estimated that, under current trends, nearly one billion people will still lack access to clean cooking options in The support plan highlights the enormous opportunities in the Sahel and its vast assets in natural resources, energy, tourism and culture.

It is aimed at mobilizing public resources and triggering private investments in the 10 countries in support of ongoing efforts and initiatives by governments, international and regional organizations, and other partners.

It is built around the following six priority areas:. The plan will bring coherence, improve coordination and strengthen collaboration with all partners in the region.

National and regional institutions, bilateral and multilateral organizations, the private sector and civil society organizations will work towards operationalizing and implementing the Security Council resolutions on the Sahel.

Women, youth and job creation will cut across all priority areas and interventions, aiming at strengthening governance, improving security and building resilience, as well as promoting a more integrated approach to address the humanitarian-security-development nexus as a strategy to accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.

Working for a World Free of Poverty. Where We Work Home. Email Print. Tweet Share Share LinkedIn. Stumble Upon. The initiative promotes investment in sustainable land use practices to strengthen the region against land degradation and climate change. Promotion of climate resilience : SAWAP supports deeper engagement on climate change as increasingly requested by clients.

Focus on knowledge networks : SAWAP enhances south-south knowledge sharing for development solutions.