This project aims to inform policy makers and implementers of the impacts of natural resource related policies on poverty and sustainable natural resource use in drylands, identifying best experiences and practices from adjacent countries with comparable natural environments. People living in drylands in Southern Africa adapt and cope with marked natural variability in factors influencing the availability of natural resources which they use in everyday livelihood activities. Policies operating at a range of scales can have an impact upon community and household natural resources, livelihood strategies and levels of poverty. These will advise the UK Department for International Development and other development agencies, governments and NGOs on best-practices and routes to sustainable natural resource management and efficient use of productive capacity in southern African drylands.
Desertification is a complex and sometimes controversial issue.
The UN CCD provides a framework for tackling desertification that embodies current thinking on the environmental and societal components of the issue. These include the need to understand the impact of national and international policies on people's behaviour towards the environment, awareness of the links between poverty, natural resource use and degradation, and the importance of recognising indigenous people's knowledge, environmental sensitivity and rights. Overall this leads to a greater appreciation of indigenous practices and local natural resource management initiatives, and illustrates that people play an important role in flexible resource use and management practices in marginal and variable environments. By embracing both inter-dryland environmental variability and inter country policy contexts, activities will allow simultaneous investigations of both key physical and key policy factors affecting natural resource use and rural poverty in southern African drylands.