Main image © IFAD
At a workshop in Saly, Senegal the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and its partners, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), launched two new programmes aimed at improving access to best practices, promoting innovation and digital transformation and facilitating mutual learning among Great Green Wall (GGW) stakeholders.
The event took place on the sidelines of the second edition of ‘A Week on the Great Green Wall’, bringing together national, regional and international partners working in the GGW.
The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) is an African land restoration initiative with the goal of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequestering 250 million tonnes of carbon and creating 10 million green jobs in rural areas across the Sahel region by 2030.
Spanning 8,000km (from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east), the intervention zone is to become home to a mosaic of sustainable agricultural systems covering 11 countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan.
Launched at the 2021 One Planet Summit, the Great Green Wall Accelerator aims to facilitate collaboration among donors and stakeholders involved in the GGW initiative and help all actors better coordinate, monitor and measure the impact of their actions.
The two new programmes, the Regional Support Programme funded through the GCF, the Inclusive Green Financing Initiative (IGREENFIN) programme and the Great Green Wall, Climate Change Adaptation Regional Support Project (GGW CCARSP), funded by the GEF, will be implemented and coordinated by IFAD and its partners.
They will focus on providing support to enhance knowledge management and piloting innovation for ecosystem restoration and climate change adaptation as well as the interlinked issues of climate change, job creation, poverty alleviation and food security.
‘IFAD is currently investing more than half a billion US dollars towards the goals of the Great Green Wall Initiative while advancing rural transformation as a key driver of poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, climate resilience and ecosystem restoration.
‘We have long promoted partnerships for inclusive and sustainable rural transformation to address the linkages between agriculture and land degradation, climate change and biodiversity conservation.’
JUAN CARLOS MENDOZA
IFAD Director of the Environment, Climate, Gender, and Social Inclusion Division
The workshop brought together representatives from the eleven GGW countries and stakeholders at national, regional and international levels to mark the effective launch of the two programmes.
It was an opportunity to take stock of the effective launch of the programmes and exchange views on their objectives, activities and the various arrangements necessary for their effective implementation.
‘Such a meeting could help make a difference and create a more sustainable, prosperous and resilient future for the communities and ecosystems that depend on the Great Green Wall.
‘We will ensure the full integration of the strategy into IFAD’s country programming and are available and eager to engage in discussions on the best approaches and options for moving forward at the country level.’
MATTEO MARCHISIO
Head of the IFAD Sahel Multi-country office in Dakar
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