About Stimulating Community Initiatives in Sustainable Land Management

Countries:  South Africa, Morocco, Ghana, Uganda 
Partners:  Overall coordinating organisation: Centre for Environment, Agriculture & Development (CEAD) University of KwaZulu-Natal - South Africa; 
Other partners: University of Development Studies – Ghana; TARGA-Aide – Morocco; Ministry of  Agriculture, Animal Industries & Fisheries – Uganda; CIS-VU Amsterdam
Period:   September 2009 – August 2013 
Donors: UNEP Global Environmental Facility; and others 

Land degradation is a big threat to the world’s rural poor. Communities in Africa often have their own solutions to problems of land degradation, but these sustainable land management (SLM) intitiatives are not adequately recognised by western scientists.

In this project we focus on identifying innovative forms of land management amongst communities in four countries in Africa. SCl-SLM will help to add value to these initiatives - through research partnerships - as well as stimulating these communities to go forward with their efforts.

Key activities

• we will analyse technical and socio-economic aspects of community based SLM
• we will refine ways of stimulating the participatory development
• we will spread the best of these systems in areas prone to land degradation
• we will develop a methodology to upscale and institutionally embed SCI-SLM approaches at national level in the four countries

The three main agencies involved in SCI-SLM are the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as overall implementing agency, the University of KwaZulu-Natal as the overall coordinating agency, and the Centre for International Cooperation (CIS) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam as the technical backstopping agency (TAG team).