General

The overall objective of the intervention is to foster safe, sustainable, and dignified living conditions for displacement-affected communities prone to conflict over natural resources and due to inadequate adaptable and diversified livelihood options resulting in additional barrier in accessing basic services. The project will be implemented in South Kordofan State and North Darfur State.

Objectives

The overall objective of the CASPIR project is to provide improved safe, sustainable, and dignified living conditions for displacement-affected communities as result of enhanced, diversified, and more adaptable livelihoods productivity due to inclusive, efficient land governance. The overall goal of the project is to improve the living conditions of communities in South Kordofan and North Darfur fostering diversification and adaptability of livelihoods systems through efficient, sustainable, and inclusive natural resources governance, with specific focus on land. In order to achieve the objectives, the project is designed along two long-term outcomes: Outcome 1: Increased peaceful co-existence among targeted communities as result of reduced conflicts over natural resources; and Outcome 2: Increased sustainability and adaptability as well as diversification of livelihoods options among the targeted communities.

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 Land administration authority, Lantmäteriet, is with this small intervention given the assignment to redisgn their ITP proposal, and to integrate a thorough gender perspective into the design, with the support of a consultant.