- At a workshop in Saly, Senegal, today, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and its partners, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), launched two new programs aimed at improving access to best practices, promoting innovation and digital transformation, and facilitating mutual learning among Great Green Wall (GGW) stakeholders. The event took place on the sidelines of the second edition of "A Week on the Great Green Wall'', bringing together national, regional and international partners working in the GGW.
The two programs, the Regional Support Programme funded through the GCF- the Inclusive Green Financing Initiative (IGREENFIN) program and the Great Green Wall, Climate Change Adaptation Regional Support Project (GGW CCARSP), funded by the GEF, will be implemented and coordinated by IFAD and its partners. They will focus on providing support to enhance knowledge management and piloting innovation for ecosystem restoration and climate change adaptation as well as the interlinked issues of climate change, job creation, poverty alleviation and food security.
"IFAD is currently investing more than half a billion US dollars towards the goals of the Great Green Wall Initiative while advancing rural transformation as a key driver of poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, climate resilience and ecosystem restoration,'' said Juan Carlos Mendoza, IFAD Director of the Environment, Climate, Gender, and Social Inclusion Division. "We have long promoted partnerships for inclusive and sustainable rural transformation to address the linkages between agriculture and land degradation, climate change and biodiversity conservation," he added.
The workshop brought together representatives from the eleven GGW countries and stakeholders at national, regional, and international levels to mark the effective launch of the two programs. It was an opportunity to take stock of the effective launch of the programs and exchange views on their objectives, activities, and the various arrangements necessary for their effective implementation.
"Such a meeting could help make a difference and create a more sustainable, prosperous, and resilient future for the communities and ecosystems that depend on the Great Green Wall. We will ensure the full integration of the strategy into IFAD's country programming and are available and eager to engage in discussions on the best approaches and options for moving forward at the country level,'' said Matteo Marchisio, Head of the IFAD Sahel Multi-country office in Dakar.
The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) is an African land restoration initiative with the goal of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land, sequestering 250 million tons of carbon, and creating 10 million green jobs in rural areas across the Sahel region by 2030. Spanning 8,000 km (from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east), the intervention zone is to become home to a mosaic of sustainable agricultural systems covering eleven countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.
Launched at the 2021 One Planet Summit, the Great Green Wall Accelerator aims to facilitate collaboration among donors and stakeholders involved in the GGW initiative and help all actors better coordinate, monitor, and measure the impact of their actions.
