Mediatrade Financial -   Africa's Drylands
Channel: Alinova Holding S.A.
Date: 2014-11-13

The World Bank is teaming up with a number of partners to prepare a report designed to contribute to the ongoing dialogue among policy makers and development practitioners about measures to reduce the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of populations living in drylands regions of sub-Saharan Africa. Based on analysis of current and projected future drivers of vulnerability and resilience, the report will identify promising interventions, quantify their likely costs and benefits, and describe the policy trade-offs that will need to be addressed when strategies are devised for the sustainable development of drylands.

Emerging initiatives suggest that a large coalition of African governments, regional organizations, development partners, multilateral and bilateral lending institutions, and civil society organizations stands ready to tackle the challenges confronting dryland regions. But while political will backed by resources does not seem to be lacking, important questions remain unanswered about how the task should be addressed.

    Do dryland environments contain sufficient resources to generate the food, employment, and income needed to support sustainable livelihoods for a fast growing population?
    If not, can injections of external resources make up the deficit?
    Or is the carrying capacity of dryland environments so limited that outmigration should be encouraged as part of a comprehensive strategy to enhance resilience?
    And given the range of policy options, where should investments be focused, considering that there are many competing priorities?

Adopting a regional approach to address these issues makes sense for four main reasons. First, many of the interventions needed to reduce vulnerability and enhance resilience have important sub-regional or regional dimensions. Second, in the presence of common challenges, there are economies of scale in developing methodologies to evaluate current patterns of vulnerability and their future evolution. Third, recent advances in remote sensing, agro-ecological systems modeling, and spatial analysis offer possibilities for looking at the questions from a regional perspective, at reasonable cost, and with the opportunity to add new insights to the body of site- or country-specific knowledge that already exists. Fourth, a regional report can facilitate the sharing of knowledge across countries and sub-regions on successful or promising technologies or policy options.
Objectives

The overarching goal of the proposed report is to improve our understanding of the unique development challenges posed by dryland regions, today and in the future, and to help identify effective interventions that can reduce the vulnerability of populations living in dryland regions and strengthen their resilience. The specific objectives of the report include the following:

    Characterize the main current and future challenges involved in reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience of households living in dryland regions of Africa;
    Develop a framework of analysis that can assess the relative effectiveness of policies to enhance resilience, thereby informing the next generation of relevant investments;
    Estimate the likely cost of the investments needed to reduce vulnerability to desirable levels (while ensuring that interventions are socially and environmentally sustainable);
    Promote sharing of regional and global knowledge about which interventions work and which do not.

Geographic scope and time horizon

The report will examine dryland areas throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, with particular attention devoted to the hotspots of vulnerability of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Sub-humid and humid areas will be considered as well, to the extent that these represent important markets for products produced or consumed in dryland areas.

The analysis will consider interventions that can be expected to deliver benefits in the short- to medium term (through 2020), as well as interventions with longer gestation periods whose payoffs would be realized over a longer time frame (through 2030). Completion of the report is expected summer 2014 and the launch by the winter.
Provisional structure of the report

Enhancing resilience in African drylands: Toward a shared development agenda

    Dryland regions: Central to Africa’s development challenge
    The human, social, and political context of drylands development
    Climate shocks and other vulnerabilities: Today and tomorrow
    Livestock production systems: Seizing the opportunities
    Agriculture: More water and better farming for improved food security
    Tree-based systems: Boosting resilience through multiple pathways
    Healthy ecosystems: Integrated approaches for well-balanced landscapes
    Market connections: Using trade to improve resilience
    Social protection: Safety nets for those in need
    The road ahead: Toward a shared drylands development agenda