Descriptions

The Sahel constitutes a good example of the challenges that climate change is imposing on the livelihoods of millions of people who live mainly from agriculture and livestock. In this region, temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster than in the rest of the world, at the same time that climate change is causing heavy rains accompanied by destructive river floods and numerous flooding episodes. These natural disasters are degrading the natural resources that are essential to the agropastoral livelihoods that underpin the economy and political stability of the country. Under the combined effect of drought and floods, land is deteriorating and losing its fertility. According to the IPCC, agricultural yields will fall by 20% per decade by the end of the 21st century in some areas of the Sahel.

The scale of these challenges is difficult to overstate. Only a systems’ transformation approach will be capable of offering real solutions to many of the problems we face; the challenge lies in mobilising the partnerships, finance, knowledge, tools and policies to catalyze transformational change, across diverse contexts, at massively accelerated speed.

The main objective of this project is to generate knowledge to unlock public and private finance, foster climate and peace sensitive policies, backstop the Great Green Wall with CGIAR and other research partners on climate research, and drive institutional changes that produce innovation, investment and action to address the climate crisis in the Sahel.

The project focuses on four countries (Senegal, Mali, Ethiopia and Sudan) as test sites to tackle on the ground issues, coupled with regional scaling.