Land Restoration and Land Degradation

 Faced with the climate and biodiversity emergencies, The Government of Sierra Leone as partner to the United Nations joined in the declaration of 2021-2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The goal is to ramp up efforts to reverse centuries of damage to forests, wetlands and other ecosystems in Sierra Leone. Getting it right will be the mandate of the Sierra Leone Land Alliance putting ecosystem back on a sustainable course.

Tree planting as a way to restore local ecosystems has already captured the imagination of many people. Trees are astonishing. They capture carbon from the atmosphere, protect and fertilize soils, supply firewood and timber, and harbour many of the planet’s animals, birds and insects. The cultural, spiritual and recreational role of forests make them even essential for human well-being.

Land degradation such as this occurs when land cover is lost or removed, causing vulnerable soil and organic matter to be washed or blown away. Salinization of soil can produce similar effects, reducing land productivity. The symptoms are many and alarming: expansion and movement of sand dunes, diminished rainfall, depletion of pastureland, erosion from wind and rain, and loss of biomass and biological integrity.

The resulting human suffering is severe. For farmers like Yeabu Bangura in Kabala, this means greater food insecurity and financial hardship. People have long depended on the land and the resources it provides to meet their basic needs and support their families. At the same time, population growth, unsustainable consumption, intensive agricultural practices, the use of damaging extractive or mining technologies, growing conflict over rights to land, forced migration of people, and climate change are pushing the planet to its limits, causing land degradation on a vast scale.

As UNCCD Executive Secretariat Ibrahim Thiaw said, “If we choose to work in harmony with nature, we will avert land degradation, we will curb our emissions, we will reverse biodiversity loss. If we choose to restore the land rather than destroy it, we can create jobs and opportunity.”

 Multi-stakeholder-based:   

The initiative will work not only with government but will cement the relationship with Local Councils and  all other stakeholders, for example the private sector, academia, the media, communities, community based groupings, schools and universities, non-governmental organizations, faith-based institutions, etc. The initiative will establish a number of networks bringing  together  actors  interested land reforms,  land restoration  and degradation by developing  strategies and action plans to increase their effective participation.

Tree Planting Campaign:

Through a 100,000+ hectare (ha) landscape restoration initiative in Sierra Leone, we aim to safeguard biodiversity, strengthen local livelihood options, and enhance climate resilience, ensuring the conservation of inland and coastal ecosystems for future generations. Mangrove forests around the world are at the frontlines of climate change and community resilience. Drivers of forest degradation, such as unsustainable wood harvesting will be addressed by the following:

• ·Co-developing a comprehensive landscape restoration vision
• working with local stakeholders to build a practical vision for restoration.
• Sustaining and expanding ongoing mangrove restoration work
• Monitoring of mangrove forests, timber logging and restoration initiatives.

Addressing deforestation

Land degradation is one of the major challenges confronting the global development agenda and its impacts have been manifested in several ways including loss of soil fertility, pollution, and loss of ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, flood protection, and water supply. In Sierra Leone, mining is perhaps the most notable proximate cause of land degradation, and it is the most easily linked to reductions in arable land and decline in soil fertility. In addition to its impacts on food security and livelihoods, land degradation within mining communities in Sierra Leone has also brought significant reductions in ecosystem services such as water supply, as rivers and streams are continually being polluted, posing dire human health issues..

 Water for People

There are about 8 million people living in Sierra Leone, of which about only 16 per cent of the population have access to basic sanitation services with 28 per cent defecating in the open while 58 per cent and 23 per cent have no access to basic water services and practicing sage hygiene practices respectively. For decades, water scarcity has been a major issue in Sierra Leone, caused mainly by years of recurrent droughts, poor management of water supply, contamination of the available water, and a sharp increase in water demand resulting from relatively high population growth. The lack of rainfall affects also the  ability to acquire food and has led to eruptions of violence in Sierra Leone. In many areas, the shortage of water in Sierra Leone has been amplified by the government’s lack of investment in water, especially in rural areas.

Most of the urban poor only have access to polluted water, which has caused cholera epidemics and multiple other diseases that affect health and livelihoods. Major water, sanitation and hygiene challenges in Sierra Leone are the low levels of use of basic sanitation services, access to safe/quality drinking water and inadequate use of safe hygiene practices by children and their families. The determination of these priority concerns is based on the available evidence derived from the analysis of the national WASH situation.

SLLA solution:

1. Provide      safe drinking water sources to deprived and hard-to-reach communities      including schools
2. Improve      access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and to      eliminate open defecation
3. Improve      access to WASH in institutions