How #LandRestoration is strengthening #ecosystems and #communities across #Africa

June 16, 2025

"Across Africa, land degradation and #ClimateChange are converging to create a growing crisis. Unsustainable land use, #deforestation and #SoilErosion have left millions of hectares barren, stripping communities of the natural resources they rely on. Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change – shifting rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and more frequent #droughts and #floods – are compounding pressures on #agriculture and water resources.

"Today, an estimated 65 percent of Africa's land is impacted by land degradation and drought, affecting more than 400 million people and causing economic losses exceeding US$70 billion each year.

"Governments across the continent are increasingly prioritizing land restoration as a national and regional imperative by pioneering policies, partnerships and investments to reverse degradation and strengthen #ClimateChangeAdaptation and #resilience. This brings tangible benefits for both people and nature, helping to secure food systems, create economic opportunities and strengthen communities against #ClimateShocks.

With support from the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries Fund and UNDP, #Ethiopia, #Rwanda and #Senegal are transforming degraded landscapes into a source of stability and productivity, their experience offering a replicable model for other nations confronting similar challenges."

Learn more:
https://climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/how-land-restoration-strengthening-ecosystems-and-communities-across-africa

#SolarPunkSunday #FoodSecurity #Adaptation #TerraceGardening #ForestRehabilitation #WaterIsLife #SoilIsLife #Reforestation #NatureBasedSolution

Lessons from the #Incas: How llamas, terraces and trees could help the #Andes survive #ClimateChange

by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, August 26, 2025

Excerpt: "The evidence shows that from around the year 1100, during a period of global warming known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, Andean communities moved higher up into the mountains. They built terraces, irrigated slopes, and planted trees such as alder to make the soil more fertile and provide wood.

"Llamas and their cousins, alpacas, were vital as they were hardy, light-footed, and supplied wool, fuel and fertilizer. Their communal dung heaps even show up in the lake sediments, revealed by spikes in fossils of certain dung-eating mites that thrived when llama caravans were pastured nearby.

"Together, these practices stabilized soils, reduced erosion, and allowed large populations to thrive in the Andes."

[...]

"When the Spanish arrived in the 1530s, this balance was upended. New livestock—cattle, sheep and goats—trampled vegetation and eroded soils. Their free-ranging herds left waste across the landscape, unlike llamas and their easily-collectible dung.

"At the same time, the Spaniards cut down forests for timber and charcoal, in contrast to the Inca who had imposed harsh penalties to protect their woodland resources. The 17th century Spanish pastor and chronicler, Bernabé Cobo, remarked that a Spanish household used as much fuel in one day as a native household would in an entire month.

"The lake sediments record the ecological damage of the era: excess nutrients from dung, more erosion, and a collapse of the Inca's sustainable land management."

Read more:
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-lessons-incas-llamas-terraces-trees.html

#SolarPunkSunday #TerraceGardening #TraditionalKnowledge #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge #ClimateAdaptive #LessonsFromThePast #SustainableLandManagement #MedievalClimaticAnomaly #MoreTrees #Colonialism #IndigenousHistory

Tiny delicate little blooms on my rosemary plant.

#TerraceGardening

Basil plants and an olive tree on my terrace in Valencia.

#TerraceGardening #Valencia #Bullring #Basil #Olives