Teaching and helping farmers to integrate trees into their lands is integral to a restoration project in a district of Rwanda that supplies most of the water used in the capital city*

Building on years of experience with sustainable land and agro-ecosystem management activities in Rulindo district, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations provided support to 276 farmers.

Pig-rearing, essential oils, fruit trees and beekeeping: establishing additional sources of income has been key to a restoration project on the biodiversity-rich island of Madagascar.*

Forest loss and degradation have plagued Madagascar’s unique biological diversity. Direct causes include slash-and-burn agriculture for subsistence crops. As a result, the island’s evergreen forest is severely fragmented. While tree planting had occurred in the past, it centred on exotic species with limited social and ecological benefits.

A private company is restoring degraded forest reserves in Ghana with commercial as well as native tree species, applying a business model that also brings strong community and environmental benefits.*

The company, Form Ghana, has leased about 20,000 hectares in three forest reserves in the West Africa country in order to establish and manage sustainable forest plantations. These areas were once productive semi-deciduous forest ecosystems. However, decades of overexploitation, bush fires and conversion to agricultural land left them severely degraded.

After a quarter-century of restoration in a heavily degraded river basin in Costa Rica, a “model forest” platform is helping a local foundation to promote the benefits of its work and boost business in an economically depressed region.*

The area surrounding the headwaters of the Nosara River, which flows from the highlands of the Nicoya Peninsula into the Pacific Ocean, suffered deforestation under a past government policy that encouraged large-scale land clearing for agriculture and cattle ranching.

Farmers in poor rural areas of Guatemala are learning how agroforestry incorporating the culturally important breadnut tree can boost their nutrition and income as well as restoring degraded land through deforestation*.

In a pilot project, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations assisted 38 smallholder families in Petén, the northernmost department of Guatemala, to become “restoration farmers.” Their plots will serve as demonstration sites for efforts to scale up the initiative to the regional level.

The objective of the India Ecosystem Services Project (ESIP), which is under preparation, is to improve forest quality, land management, and nontimber forest produce (NTFP) benefits for forest dependent communities in selected landscapes in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. It is designed to enhance the outcomes of the national Green India Mission, which targets improving the quality of forests in about 5 million hectares.

This project aims to strengthen the National Protected Areas System and to support sustainable land use and restoration practices in selected areas of the Dry Corridor of Nicaragua, in order to foster biodiversity conservation, resilient landscapes, and local livelihoods.

Burundi’s economy is dominated by small-scale agriculture practiced on the slopes of hills and mountains. The burgeoning population and an overwhelming reliance on natural resources by 90 percent of the population have both caused aggravated environmental degradation. The recent World Bank Country Environment Analysis estimates that each year, almost 38 million tons of soil is lost and land degradation cost 4% of the country’s GDP. Soil erosion worsens Burundi’s socioeconomic situation, and particularly affects the poorest.

Sahelian Africa is significantly affected by rainfall variability. Its populations are among the poorest and most threatened by climatic changeability and land degradation, as they depend heavily on healthy ecosystems to sustain their livelihoods. Increasing pressures on food, fodder, and fuelwood have a significant impact on the environment; and frequent droughts and poorly managed land and water resources contribute to expanding soil erosion. The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative emerged in 2007 to address climate change, land degradation, and desertification.

The five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are among the Europe and Central Asia Region’s most vulnerable to climate change; building resilience is thus a priority for poverty reduction and shared prosperity in Central Asia. Such impacts are already being felt and are expected to intensify, with the agriculture, energy, and water sectors most at risk.

Desertification in arid and semiarid areas of Northwest China is a major current environmental issue for the country, caused by the interaction of a naturally dry climate, recurrent periods of prolonged droughts, anthropogenic factors over long periods of time, and specific topographic and geographic conditions. Among the anthropogenic factors are poor land management, inadequate farming techniques and over-cultivation, overgrazing and the removal of natural vegetation; misuse of water resources; and poor environmental and ecosystem management.

This project aims to improve sustainable natural resource management and promote livelihood diversification in selected Tunisian oases.

Tunisia has significant regional and social disparities, especially between the coastal and inland areas. Its oases have always been agricultural production and trade centers that link remote regions together. They cover about 41,710 hectares of the country’s area and are home to around 950,000 people.