Drought, desertification and land degradation are serious problems in Africa. Around 28 percent of land is degraded and 319 million hectares are vulnerable to desertification. Trees are needed, but water on which they depend is limited.
UN Environment, with funding support from the Korea Forest Service (KFS) initiated a pilot project to demonstrate how wastewater can be beneficial to afforestation and rehabilitation of ecosystems. The wastewater is collected from households and filtered in a series of lagoons, before being pumped to the project site using solar power. Under the ambit of the “Capacity Building of Developing Countries and Promoting Actions for Addressing Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought, Reforestation and Forest Rehabilitation in Degraded Lands” the project was first implemented in Ghana, Morocco and Tunisia and then replicated in Benin and Ethiopia.
UN Environment in collaboration with the KFS visited sites to measure the achievement of the project over the last two years in Benin and Ethiopia. The UN and KFS team met with national and local government and district administrations representatives to deliberate and improve various technical aspects of project implementation such as collaboration between public and private sectors, and planting exotic species versus indigenous tree species.
Through these activities UN Environment and the KFS were able to monitor the overall progress of the project, as well as identify weaknesses and provide advice to national project managers for improvement.
For more information, please contact Emmanuel.Adonsou@un.org
