Extensive areas of Africa's humid tropical lowland forests have been allocated to timber concessions, but are also inhabited by villagers who obtain resources from the forest. Approximately 61% of timber species in the Congo Basin also yield locally used non-timber forest products (NTFP). Among these are fruits and oil from Moabi (Baillonella toxisperma), and edible caterpillars from Sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum), and Tali (Erythrophleum suaveolens).

The SADC Futures project has developed a range of foresight training materials. The SADC Futures Foresight Training Toolkit forms part of this knowledge series and presents content that was given during the SADC Futures webinar series, a six-part virtual webinar series and facilitated training.

Land degradation is rampant in Africa, accounting for 46% of the total land area. Land degradation at the current pace is projected to render more than half of the cultivated land in Africa unusable by 2050. Land degradation and climate change mutually reinforce each other, creating serious implications for food security, biodiversity and livelihoods in Africa. Effective early warning systems are an essential and important alert mechanism for addressing land degradation.

Desertification has increased in African drylands in recent decades, led by land use change, climatic variability and poor land management practices. People living in drylands in Africa are highly vulnerable to desertification and climate change, because of their impacts on a wide range of livelihood based resources. Desertification and climate change affect gender disproportionately, with women and youth being the most affected. Without implementation of adequate measures, climate change will exacerbate the vulnerability to desertification among dryland populations in Africa.

The 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) introduced the idea of “climate-resilient development pathways” (CRDPs) as key responses to the threat of climate change (Roy et al. 2018). CRDPs are not merely scenarios to envision possible futures but are processes of deliberation and implementation that address societal values, local priorities and their inevitable trade-offs (Roy et al. 2018).

This information note summarizes the state of livestock farming in the Orinoco region and the conditions that combine there to develop GANSO (abbreviation for sustainable livestock farming in Spanish, Ganaderia Sostenible), an innovative technical and financial assistance program aimed at a transformation to low-carbon and sustainable livestock farming that embraces productive, economic, social and environmental factors.

Gender differences and gender inequalities in rights, status and responsibilities significantly shape daily rural life and life cycles in rural West Africa (Levasseur 2003), where women face significant constraints in participating in activities aimed at restoring forests and farmland. Yet, they also find innovative ways to overcome such constraints, such as collective action and the creation of groups of mutual support.

The overall objective of this project was to support the scaling up of gender sensitive Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) as a mechanism to increase resilience and improve livelihoods of vulnerable households in the face of climate-related impacts. Focused on two countries, Guatemala and Honduras, it aimed to generate science-based actionable information, tools and processed that support decision making by stakeholders at different scales, from farmers to subnational, national and regional levels. Its specific objectives were: