SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT IN THE SAHEL Lessons from the Sahel and West Africa Program in Support of the Great Green Wall (SAWAP) January 2021 January 2021 SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT IN THE SAHEL Lessons from the Sahel and West Africa Program in Support of the Great Green Wall (SAWAP) in 12 countries* (2012-2019) *The 12 countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Togo. They represent 9 of the 11 members countries of the Pan African Agency. ACRONYMS ARLI African Resilient Landscapes Initiative AU African Union BRICKS Building Resilient, Information, Communication, and Knowledge Services Interstate CILSS Comité permanent inter-Etats de lutte contre la sécheresse dans le Sahel, Interstate Committee for Desertification Control in the Sahel CPF Country Partnership Framework CPS Country Partnership Strategy CREMA Resource Management Committees DRM Disaster Risk Management FAO Food and Agricultural Organization FCS Fragile and Conflict States FMNR Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration GDP Gross Domestic Product GEF Global Environmental Facility GGW The Great Green Wall HDI Human Development Index ICR Implementation Completion Report IDA International Development Association IDP Internally Displaced Persons IEG Independent Evaluation Group INRM Integrated Natural Resources Management ISR Implementation Status and Results IUCN International Union for Conservation of Nature KPI Key Performance Indicators LULC Land use/Land cover M&E Monitoring and Evaluation NDVI Normalized Difference Vegetative Index NEWMAP Nigeria’s Erosion and Watershed Management Project NGO Non-Governmental Organizations NRM Natural Resources Management OSS Observatoire du Sahara et du Sahel, Sahara and Sahel Observatory PA Protected Area PDO Project Development Objective PRAPS Regional Sahel Pastoralism Support Program SAWAP Sahel and West Africa Program SLMP Sustainable Land Management Project SLWM Sustainable Land and Water Management UNCCD United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification WACA West African Coastal Areas Program WAAP West African Productivity Project ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was prepared by: Bob Winterbottom (Lead Forestry and Land Consultant), Chris Reij (Lead Sustainable Land Management Consultant), and George Henry Stirrett (Environment Specialist, World Bank). It was reviewed input and guidance from Philippe Dardel (Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist, World Bank) and Ellysar Baroudy (Lead Natural Resources Management Specialist, World Bank). Philippe Dardel was the team leader of the SAWAP program. The team would like to thank Jean-Marc Sinnassamy (Sr. Environmental Specialist, GEF), and from the World Bank, Paola Agostini and Stephen Danyo (previous task team leaders), Gayatri Kanungo, Mirko Serkovic, Yasmina Oodally, Madjiguene Seck , and Sujatha Venkat Ganeshan for their contributions and review of drafts. The team acknowledges the guidance provided by Maria Sarraf (Practice Manager). This is not a comprehensive review of the SAWAP experience. The research for this report was conducted within a few months period and no travel were completed due to COVID-19. The report is based largely on project documentation (e.g., Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) Reports, Implementation Completion Reports (ICR), Implementation Status and Results reports (ISR), Aide Memoires) and interviews with Task Team members. Photo credit: Page 10, Chris Reij: Cropland and Regenerated Agroforestry Parkland with Faidherbia albida (gao) Trees, Badaguichiri Valley, Tahoua, Niger. All other photos: Andrea Borgarello for World Bank/TerrAfrica. Design: Ndeye Diele Faye TABLE OF CONTENTS Acronyms............................................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements............................................................................................................................................. ii Executive Summary............................................................................................................................................. iv Introduction.......................................................................................................................................................... 1 The Great Green Wall and Sustainable Land Management across the Sahel and West Africa Region...................................................................................................................................................... 3 SAWAP Portfolio Review..................................................................................................................................... 9 Scope and Focus of the SAWAP Projects......................................................................................................... 9 Key Performance Indicators of SAWAP............................................................................................................ 13 Initial Lessons Learned from the SAWAP.......................................................................................................... 19 The Super-Star SLWM Project: Ethiopia Sustainable Land Management Phase 2......................................... 19 SAWAP Project’s Scope and Focus................................................................................................................... 20 Land Tenure and Enabling SLWM Policy...........................................................................................................23 Sahel Biodiversity and the Great Green Wall..................................................................................................... 25 Regional SAWAP Project - BRICKS.................................................................................................................... 26 SAWAP’s Monitoring and Evaluation.................................................................................................................27 SLWM and Environmental Peacebuilding......................................................................................................... 29 Outlook for the Next Generation of World Bank SLWM Financing.................................................................. 30 Conclusions and Recommendations.................................................................................................................. 32 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report documents the key outcomes and lessons learned from the Sahel and West Africa Program in support of the Great Green Wall (SAWAP) from 2012 to 2019. The SAWAP was a programmatic approach developed by the World Bank using $100 million of GEF resources on the top of $1.2 billion IDA resources for twelve countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Togo. A regional project named “BRICKS” for Building Resilient, Information, Communication, and Knowledge Services project ($4.6 million) was included focusing on coordination and knowledge. SAWAP was approved in 2012 “to expand sustainable land and water management (SLWM) in targeted landscapes and in climate vulnerable areas in West African and Sahelian countries”. The following review takes into account outcomes from six national projects already closed and six national projects that will be closing by 2022. In terms of outcomes, the SAWAP projects have surpassed their initial cumulative targets establishing 1.6 million hectares (ha) of SLWM practices across the twelve countries (an area larger than Lebanon), with success stories particularly in Ethiopia, Niger, Nigeria, and Sudan. The number of project beneficiaries has been far exceeded with more than 19.4 million of beneficiaries. At the macro level, the SAWAP program has demonstrated success in some difficult country contexts. While two of its outcomes were largely surpassed, two outcomes (Normalized Difference Vegetative Index and carbon accumulation rates in biomass and soil) faced methodological problems. Overall, the positive effect of the SAWAP was demonstrated for a variety of land categories (rangelands in Chad, Senegal, and Sudan; tree cover in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and Ghana), and SAWAP also contributed to convene institutions, vet and share information, improve incentives and understand how to scale up investment. In terms of success stories, the Ethiopian Sustainable Land Management Project 2 (SLMP2) appears as a transformative landscape project to scale up SLWM investments. This project applied a highly decentralized and participatory process to mobilize SLWM investments in more than 550,000 ha. The Ethiopia SLMP2 was fully SLWM focused with more than $30 million in financing, addressing root-causes of land degradation, including tenure insecurity with the issuance of land certificates to more than 360,200 households. Development partners can learn much from the achievements of the Ethiopia SLMP2, one of the main lessons being that this project benefitted from many prior years of investment in SLM In Nigeria, NEWMAP too has been a success; although the entry point, peri urban gullies mostly, is different from other projects that focus on restoring productive agricultural lands, this entry point was and is the priority in Nigeria’s UNCCD National Action Programme. As the urban-peri-urban areas increase across Africa, the NEWMAP experience should provide valuable insights. There are lessons to take from SAWAP in designing future programmatic approaches. The