Release of the first articles on restoring African drylands

Release of the first articles on restoring African drylands

the Netherlands - 11 September, 2020

Drylands occupy more than a third of all the world’s land, most now degraded or severely degraded. Drylands are also home to an equivalent proportion of humanity, and a disproportionate number of the world’s poorest people. But with the right support, they is also much potential to rapidly reduce poverty, increase ecological and economic resilience, and climate change mitigation through soil carbon sequestration.

National forest landscape restoration commitments to meet international goals such as the Bonn Challenge and AFR100 have added to the growing momentum for dryland restoration. But setting ambitious goals is easy – realising them is much harder – and at current rates it may take a generation or more for most countries to reach their targets. So, how to speed up the process?

Of the many projects and programmes since the 1980s some had impact, though few were interconnected or well documented. ETFRN News 60, ‘Restoring African drylands’ collates a selection of these, that highlight the roles of varied policies and stakeholder interests, and identify opportunities to encourage smallholder and community participation in effectively scaling out successes.

Prior to publication of the full volume (December 2020), individual articles will be published each week from mid-September as they are completed on www.etfrn.org and www.tropenbos.org.

The first two articles are now available