General

Climate change and biodiversity loss are increasingly presented as an interconnected environmental crisis in need of a global scaling up investments for its mitigation. While the urgency is based on ecological evidence and receives state, corporate and civil society support, the rolling out of green investments at the local level can be highly problematic. Green initiatives tend to be implemented in economically and politically marginalized regions, and reproduce existing social and environmental injustices through dynamics of dispossession. The proposed project’s purpose is to provide novel insights into emerging conflict dynamics over land-based resources in the wake of green investments in the East African drylands. Its specific aim is to study how multiple stakeholders engage in conflicts that emerge at the intersection of green energy investments and conservation efforts on one hand, and pastoralist community’s control over communal land resources through ongoing land reform policies that aim to provide tenure-security for local communities on the other. This will be achieved through a multi-site ethnography in two counties in northern Kenya, with data being collected through a strategic combination of questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, supported by document analysis. The results are expected to produce advice and identify lessons for wider East African drylands, which share similar challenges to secure community land tenure in the face of green investments.

General

An estimated 80% of the global population lack secure water resources. Many also lack ready access to fuel wood and other tree derived benefits. However, the current scientific paradigm says that we must choose which problem to solve as increasing tree cover always reduces water availability. Consider the costs if this thinking is wrong. In Africa, 175 M ha of degraded lands are judged suitable for tree planting which could significantly enhance people’s livelihoods. Our previous research in the seasonally dry tropics indicates that an intermediate tree cover can often improve groundwater recharge. This need testing on a larger scale, but if confirmed will upend the prevailing view in hydrology and have profound implications for policies affecting millions of livelihoods and the environment.  Thus, the aim of this project is to provide evidence for better policies and management that will benefit poor people in drylands by evaluating the novel “optimum tree cover theory” for groundwater recharge across African drylands. The project involves four leading institutions; SLU, ICRAF, WU and NMBU. We will use the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework; a unique dataset that is available across Africa. It consists of multiple variables, including tree cover and key soil variables. We will do complementary strategic measurements of soil water flow and tree water use to model groundwater recharge as a function of tree cover under common conditions of the seasonally dry tropics.

General

The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority (Lantmäteriet) and Rwanda Natural Resources Authority (RNRA) Department of Lands and Mapping and Office of the Registrar (DLM) - now Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority (RLMUA) have submitted a request for support for collaboration between the two government agencies during 2017-2021. The overall purpose of the collaboration is to contribute to strengthened capacity of RLMUA to deliver efficient land administration services in accordance with the Rwanda Land Sub Sector Strategic Plan (LSSSP) 2013/14 – 2017/18. The intervention will contribute to overall enhanced environmental management by providing improved and more accessible and reliable information on land use, land rights and land use planning. This information is used for enhanced planning and policy development in order to improve environmental conditions and readiness to handle natural disasters, as well as sustainable management of natural resources. A well-developed and efficient public land administration authority and is a requirement to be able to protect the environment and natural resources, and is a key component in delivering environmental sustainability and address issues such as deforestation, erosion and other forms of land degradation. The collaboration between RLMUA and Lantmäteriet will constitute a broad government agency collaboration focused on capacity development of the staff within RLMUA. Lantmäteriets expertise will be used for counselling, studies, training, curriculum development and professional development on policy, legislation, technical methods in land administration and management, organizational development, management of human resources, financial system and leadership. The activities will also include efforts to collaborate with the organisations responsible for higher education in land management in Rwanda, namely Ruhengeri Institute of Higher Education, INES Ruhengeri and the University of Rwanda, for continuous competence development of the land management sector. Lantmäteriet and RLMUA will develop the full results framework jointly during the inception phase, including a workplan and method for monitoring and evaluation of results during the project. This will be part of a broader inception report. Continued support after the inception phase is conditioned on the Embassy's approval of the report. The total budget amounts to 37 726 112 SEK distributed over five years (2017-2021).

Objectives

Strengthened capacity of Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority (RLMUA) to deliver efficient land administration services in accordance to the Rwanda Land Sub Sector Strategic Plan.