General

In a proposal dated April 2023, IGAD has requested Sweden to financially support a project called Improving Land Governance in IGAD region with a total sum of SEK 55 Million over a period of three years starting in April 2023. The new contribution builds on the gains that have been made in the project that is about to end. The overall goal of the project by IGAD is to enhance transnational land governance through capacity development on innovations in land administration, land use and management, strengthening gender equality and youth empowerment in the IGAD Region.

General

The seven Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal) are facing multiple interlinked shocks and stressors: climate induced factors as recurrent droughts and flooding, land degradation, high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, rising insecurity, unequal access to basic services, poorly integrated markets and displacement. As in its first phase the project aims to build increased resilience to climate induced shocks and crisis in the Sahel (and Africa) by enhancing the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) thus strengthen the policy and institutional capacities at regional and national levels to better manage multidimensional risks through device mechanisms that anticipate and respond to the challenges the region faces. The project aimed to achieve results by the five outputs: 1) Increased capacity on tracking and monitoring progress on Sendai Framework and AU Program of Action implementation through enhanced data collection, analysis and reporting system; 2) Strengthened regional and multicountry regulatory, policy and budgetary frameworks for translating disaster and climate data into risk informed development planning and budgeting; 3) Enhanced regional recovery and resilience building processes that address underlying disaster and climate change risks and restore pathways to sustainable development in the Sahel Countries; 4) Enhanced Regional Capacities for Urban Risk Management in West Africa; and 5) Enhanced innovations and knowledge on risk informed development through Regional Dialogue and SouthSouth exchange.

Objectives

The Sahel resilience project phase 1 and this phase 2 aims to build increased resilience to shocks and crisis in the Sahel (and Africa) by strengthen the policy and institutional capacities at regional and national levels to better manage multidimensional risks through device mechanisms that anticipate and respond to the challenges the region faces by enhancing the implementation of the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (SFDRR). The Project's expected outcome is that Regional institutions and national governments institutionalize and domesticate risk-informed development planning, programming, and investment for resilience building. This will integrate risk reduction in planning and investment decisions. This is done through the following results (outputs): Output 1: Increased capacity on tracking and monitoring progress on Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) and AU Programme of Action implementation in the Sahel region through enhanced data collection, analysis, and reporting systems Output 2: Strengthened regional and multi-country regulatory, policy, and budgetary frameworks for translating disaster and climate data into risk-informed development Output 3: Enhanced regional recovery and resilience-building processes that address underlying disaster and climate change risks and restore pathways to sustainable development in the Sahel countries Output 4: Enhanced regional capacities for urban risk management Output 5: Enhanced innovations and knowledge on risk-informed development through Regional Dialogue and South-South exchange (i) Disaggregated climate and disaster risk information must be collected, analyzed and utilized to inform the planning and investment decisions made by the national governments and the society; (ii) A conducive policy environment must be in place to guide and enhance capacities of regional and national institutions in the Sahel to understand and translate disaster and climate risk information into decision making processes for development that leave no-one behind; (iii) Sahel regional institutions, national governments and community members have systems and mechanisms in place to manage future recovery processes in a manner that is effective and promotes long-term resilience building; and (iv) Urban areas, which are the powerhouse for economic development, have robust urban risk management systems to respond and adapt to the increasing climatic and disaster risks such that it offers itself as a sustainable engine of transformation.

General

Secondary forests account for 70% of tropical forest areas. Despite the importance of these forests’ re-growth to climate change mitigation and livelihoods of poor smallholders living in them, they are almost invisible in research and of low priority in climate change agendas. Secondary forest areas are typically located in rural ‘frontiers’, where commodity crops expand and where government presence, authority and legitimacy is limited and land rights are contested. Taking the Peruvian Amazon as a case, this research will engage with two commodity frontiers (cacao, oil palm). We will explore how these commodity frontiers reshape smallholder secondary forest and the role of the law, the state, the market and smallholder land claims in relation to the making of diverse tropical secondary forest landscapes. We will explore the assemblages of commodity frontier actors around these commodity frontiers. Knowledge of how regrowth is enabled or hindered socially and politically in tropical landscapes, where competition for land is high and the state has limited control, is crucial for supporting future global/national forest policy and climate adaptation/mitigation agendas. It also contributes to improving the livelihoods of poor and forest dependent households. We will use village studies to capture the local dynamics of commodity frontiers. This will be combined with analyses of commodity markets, relevant policies and laws and their implementation.

General

Pastoralists across East Africa are challenged by loss of land, political conflicts, population increase, economic inequality, and climate change. A transition from pastoralism to agro-pastoralism has been observed in semi-arid areas in response to these challenges. The hypothesis for this project is that the resilience of this transition rests on the capacity to provide secure but still flexible access to land, the so called paradox of pastoralist land tenure.The purpose of this project is to conduct a comparative study of land tenure and capacity for climate adaption in four semi-arid, pastoralist regions in Kenya. The aim is to provide new insights on how pastoralist land tenure can be designed to enable effective adaptation strategies. The four Kenyan case study counties are all dominated by semi-arid land.We identify and categorize land tenure systems and associated practices within these four areas, and map the way land tenure is practiced in these counties through samples of communities in each county. This will enable an evaluation of the marginal valuation of changes in attributes central to household welfare and collective action. The project will use a combination of ecological methods to measure rangeland productivity, combined with interview data on household livestock and milk production, animal breeds and health.We will then synthesize these results to identify pathways towards resilient pastoralist land tenure systems and propose alternative tenure designs.

General

The covenant focuses on the implementation of a responsible investment policy by Insurers, due to the international nature of this activity, and contains the agreements of the Parties with regard to investments. This involves preventing, limiting and, ifnecessary, repairing any negative impact on humans, animals and the environment as much as possible. The covenant contains agreements to clarify specific ESG themes and to support insurers in strengthening their policy and due diligence on these specificand other ESG themes. The themes primarily concern animal welfare, children's rights, land rights, climate change and controversial weapons and controversial arms trade (chapter 2 Covenant). Agreements have also been made regarding the investment policy of insurers; for example, an ESG due diligence procedure must be described, sector and/or theme-oriented policy must be drawn up and it must be made clear in which behaviors or sectors investments will not be made. Amnesty International (not part of the grant application) mainly contributes knowledge about human rights, but also children's rights, land rights and controversial arms trade. - Save the Children mainly contributes knowledge about children's rights, child labour, nutrition and also about health care. - Oxfam Novib mainly contributes knowledge about gender equality, land rights, access to medicines, climate change, fair taxation and the fight against corruption. - PAX mainly contributes knowledge about controversial weapons and the arms trade, protecting civilians and standing up for victims of human rights violations in conflict areas, and about natural resources in relation to conflict and human rights. - Nature and Environment contributes Nature and Environment contributes knowledge in particular about climate change, loss of biodiversity, the energy transition, the agricultural and food transition and the sustainable use of raw materials. - World Animal Protection mainly brings knowledge about animal welfare, but also about climate, biodiversity, the food transition and public health.