In 2015, TerrAfrica would be commemorating a decade of using sustainable land and water management practices to drive climate resilient, food and water security in sub-Saharan Africa.

The African-driven global partnership, spearheaded by the African Union’s New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) Agency and the World Bank currently has SLWM projects and investments in 23 African countries.

The Sahel and West Africa Program (SAWAP) has supported the implementation of country-driven vision for integrated natural resource management for sustainable and climate-resilient development.

“Most of the countries are able to come back now in terms of climate change, land degradation much more rapidly because for the last ten years and in a lot of dialogue catalyzed by TerrAfrica, the issue of practices on sustainable natural resource management has come up on the surface,” stated Martin Bwalya, Head of Program Development at the NEPAD Agency.

TerrAfrica has about $3billion worth of investments in African countries co-financed by the World Bank and bilateral partners.

To sustain the momentum, the initiative is creating an alliance for resilient landscape approaches whilst allowing countries to develop their investment opportunities.

Magda Lovel, Practice Manager at the World Bank, says the TerrAfrica evolution would make agriculture part of a larger integrated landscape management involving land, water, forest and biodiversity.

The linkages, she observed, would increase the benefits of decisions because “looking at upper watersheds and downstream water sheds are very much linked; so if you rehabilitate upper watershed, you have benefits downstream for communities and peoples”.

The success of TerrAfrica, according to Mr. Bwalya, is the ability of countries to internalize interventions under the project.

According to him, the initiative has also helped to galvanize dialogue at the political and policy levels, through which governments are investing in restoration, land degradation and water management and other practices that impact of resilience in local communities in the face of climate change.

“What is new now is not giving the communities fish but teaching them to fish; therefore what remains in the countries is the capacity, ability, commitment and willingness to actually discover and understand the problems to find solutions for themselves,” he noted.

The TerrAfrica Executive Committee Meeting held in Lima, Peru on the sidelines of the 20^th Conference of Parties (COP) of the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) outlined a roadmap to sustain the momentum.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) believes the landscape approach is critical in sustainable economic and human development.

“It is of primary importance that the developing world uses the landscape approach which brings up the integrity of the management of natural resources as well as the populations living there,” noted UNCCD Special Advisor on Global Issues, Sergio Zelaya-Bonilla.

Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh