Belinda Kulatau
Rundu – The Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform recently launched the seventh Global Environment Facility project in Rundu.
The project, valued at more than N$100 million, was made possible through a collaboration between MEFT, MAWLR and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations.
It aims to transform the management of production systems in Namibia’s Miombo-Mopane woodlands by using an integrated landscape approach that is focused on avoiding, reducing and reversing land degradation, which is Namibia’s commitment to the UN convention in order reduce desertification, and therefore achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) by 2030-2040.
About 200 hectares will be cleared by using agroforestry, which are land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboos) are deliberately used on the same land management units as agricultural crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence. In agroforestry systems, there are both ecological and economic interactions between the different components.
The project is part of a Global Impact Programme on Dryland Sustainable Landscapes (DSL-IP), and is benefitting Asia and 11 African countries, including Namibia. It was launched under the title Integrated Landscape Management to Reduce, Reverse and Avoid Further Degradation, and support the sustainable use of
natural resources in the Mopane-Miombo Belt of Northern Namibia (Namibia DSL- IP Project).
FAO assistant representative in Namibia Ferdinand Mwapopi said the project hopes to safeguard the livelihoods of many Namibians in the Omusati, Oshikoto and Kavango East regions. “It is crucial that all key stakeholders understand the ownership of the project goals and objectives” to ensure that it is a success, he added.
The GEF-7 project also hopes to allow the application of the land degradation neutrality framework and landscape levels, as well as to strengthen the knowledge, learning and collaboration that supports the progress of set LDN targets.
More than 10 000 households, of which 40% will be women-headed households, are expected to benefit from this project.
*Belinda Kulatau is an information officer at MICT Kavango East Region.