Restoring land, strengthening communities: Building Africa’s resilience from the ground up

Africa’s resilience to climate change, drought and land degradation will not be built through isolated interventions. It will depend on connecting land restoration with livelihoods, food and water security, biodiversity conservation and the interface of science and local knowledge of the communities who manage these landscapes every day.

That was the central message of the high-level side event “Building a Resilient Africa: Scaling Land Restoration, Nature-based Solutions and Sustainable Landscapes in Eastern and Southern Africa,” held at the IUCN Pavilion.

Convened by IUCN, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and LANDESA, with support from CBA SCALE+, the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) Implementation Hub and the GEF7 Sustainable Land Management project in Kenya, the event brought together government representatives, regional institutions and practitioners to explore what it will take to move from successful local initiatives towards a shared, actionable vision of resilience across Eastern and Southern Africa.

Resilience starts with healthy land

Across the region, land degradation and drought are putting pressure on food security, water availability, livelihoods and economic development. For Dr. Eng. Festus Ng’eno, Kenya’s Principal Secretary, these challenges are fundamentally interconnected.

He noted that resilience needs to mean more than recovering from a crisis. It must also mean recovering the lands and communities on which economies and livelihoods depend.

Kenya is advancing its Land Degradation Neutrality target-setting process, while working to strengthen how degraded land is identified, monitored and restored. But Ng’eno stressed that achieving resilience will require a shift from thousands of individual projects towards investment at scale.

For Mr. Vhalinavho Khavhagali, Country Director of IUCN South Africa, who moderated the session, this need to move from discussion to implementation was equally important. With drought a critical issue for communities across Africa, he stressed that COP17 needs to deliver tangible outcomes.

Restoration must deliver for people and nature

The region already has a wealth of experience to build on. Ms Bernice Swarts, Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment of South Africa, highlighted initiatives across Eastern and Southern Africa, including CBASCALE+,  'Towards Ending Drought Emergencies' (TWENDE) and 'Building resilient community conservancies for biodiversity conservation, resilience, livelihood improvement and peace/security in Churo-Kirisia-Mukogodo-Oldonyiro-Ndoto-Mathews Ranges-Sabarwawa ecosystems in Northern Kenya'  (REPLAN) , 'Transforming Eastern Province through Adaptation' (TREPA) in Rwanda and Bahari Yetu in Tanzania, alongside sustainable land management programmes supported by the Global Environment Facility. 

In South Africa, restoration efforts are combining ecosystem recovery with water security, livelihoods and community resilience — from solar-powered boreholes in drought-affected areas to agroforestry, improved rangeland management, fodder production and climate-resilient community food gardens.

These examples demonstrate why restoration cannot be reduced to tree planting or hectares restored. It needs to restore ecological functions while strengthening livelihoods and productivity.

This is also the thinking behind integrated approaches such as IUCN's REGEN Africa, which connects people, planet and prosperity. As Swarts emphasised, restoring one part of a landscape without considering the wider system will not deliver lasting resilience.

“We cannot restore wetlands while ignoring the wider catchment. We cannot restore rangelands without considering farmers and pastoralists. We cannot plant trees without ensuring ecological suitability, survival and community ownership.”

The same integrated approach is essential for drought resilience. Swarts called for a shift from responding to drought after it becomes a crisis towards investing in preparedness, early warning, national drought planning, ecosystem restoration and anticipatory action — backed by predictable finance, technology transfer and capacity-building. 

Resilience looks different on the ground

A resilient landscape cannot be designed from a distance. For pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa, for example, resilience is closely linked to the health of rangelands and the ability to move between areas in response to changing conditions.

Dr. Guyo M. Roba, Head of the Dryland Development Unit at IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD), reminded us that land is a critical element across East Africa and the Greater Horn of Africa. In these drylands, land is the foundation of survival, culture and prosperity for millions of pastoralists and agro‑pastoralists who depend on healthy rangelands for their livelihoods and resilience. Healthy rangelands and facilitated mobility are therefore essential to maintaining these adaptive capacities.

Ms Sibongile Mavimbela, Senior Programme Officer for Environment and Climate Change at SADC, brought this principle directly into the discussion on Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are deeply connected to people’s livelihoods, cultures and food security, particularly in pastoral and rangeland systems. 

The task, she argued, is to connect community knowledge and governance systems with scientific knowledge and public policy.

“Communities need to be at the centre of development, not at the receiving end.”

This means recognising communities as knowledge owners and implementation partners, rather than beneficiaries of externally designed programmes. It also means recognising customary systems of land management as part of the governance landscape.

From ownership to investment

Community ownership also needs to be supported by the right enabling conditions.

Dr Leonard Tampushi, National Project Coordinator, GEF7 SFM Project, National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) Kenya, highlighted land ownership and tenure security as critical foundations for sustainable rangeland management and restoration. Where communities have secure rights and ownership, there is greater potential to build sustainable value chains and develop bankable business models around natural resources.

Governments therefore have an important role not only in policy and regulation, but in helping communities access finance and creating the conditions for private-sector investment to flow towards sustainable landscapes.

The lesson from implementation is clear: restoration is more likely to succeed when communities have genuine ownership and are connected to government systems, including policy and legal frameworks.

Building resilience from the ground up

The CBA SCALE+ initiative provides a practical example of this locally led approach.

Mr Simba Mandota, IUCN Zimbabwe Country Representative and CoP for CBA SCALE+, highlighted how the initiative works with communities to understand their vulnerabilities, priorities and aspirations in a changing climate.

Rather than focusing on a single intervention, CBA SCALE+ supports livelihood diversification and nature-based opportunities, including sustainable agriculture and non-timber forest products. Women and youth are central to this work, while collective action and stronger community institutions provide the foundations for longer-term resilience.

“Resilience is built from ground up, not from top down.”

But locally led adaptation also needs pathways into wider decision-making. Mandota identified six priorities emerging from community experience: generating evidence together with communities; enabling meaningful participation in policy processes; strengthening local institutions; demonstrating solutions at scale; connecting communities to national and international platforms; and treating communities as co-producers of knowledge.

Co-creating solutions for scale

For Dr. Elinasi Monga, IUCN Regional Head of the Land Systems Programme for Eastern and Southern Africa, and Kenya Country Representative, this has implications for the way programmes are designed from the outset. 

Both CBA SCALE+ and a GEF-supported project in Kenya were co-created with communities, drawing on their understanding of the challenges they face and the solutions that could work in their specific contexts.

Communities living with land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are not simply recipients of interventions. They understand the changes taking place around them and have knowledge of the opportunities for responding to them.

Monga therefore stressed the importance of moving away from programmes designed for communities towards programmes designed with them.

“Instead of us as programme developers sitting somewhere and developing on behalf of communities – we need to cocreate with communities.”

This approach can make interventions more relevant to both communities and governments, while strengthening their potential to deliver lasting outcomes.

From projects to a resilient Africa

Across the discussion, a common message emerged: Africa does not lack solutions. The challenge is creating the conditions for those solutions to connect, grow and endure.

That means moving from fragmented interventions towards integrated landscape and seascape approaches; recognising Indigenous and local knowledge alongside scientific evidence; strengthening land rights and community institutions; developing investment models that can attract finance; and ensuring women and youth are active participants in shaping resilient futures.

It also means strengthening cooperation across countries, institutions and sectors.

As Africa works to deliver the UNCCD COP17 theme of “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope,” the task is to turn ambition into implementation — and implementation into lasting change.

The event made clear that restoration is ultimately about more than land. It is about restoring livelihoods, strengthening resilience, protecting biodiversity and ensuring that communities have the rights, resources and voices to shape the landscapes on which their futures depend.

The pathway to a resilient Africa starts from the ground up, but it will take collective action, stronger partnerships and investment at scale to take those solutions further.