Conservation International and the Peace Parks Foundation have committed $150 million to a new initiative during Africa Climate Week that aims to boost biodiversity and climate resilience through climate-smart grazing practices.
The project aims to restore 20 mln hectares of degraded rangeland habitats through their “Herding for Health” model.
“This kind of collaboration is the best way to achieve goals and maintain the ecosystems that for 200,000 years have sustained life across the African continent,” said Suzanne Ngo-Eyok, Africa senior vice president for Conservation International, in a statement.
“The carbon sequestration potential of Africa’s healthy grasslands, savannah, and shrublands ecosystems is equivalent to the carbon sink value of the entire Amazon rainforest. Even though they store vast amounts of irrecoverable carbon, provide livelihood opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people, and are culturally significant to pastoralist communities, current conservation efforts on these ecosystems are low.”
Rangeland habitats, including grassland, savannah, and shrublands, comprise more than half the of global land and 62% of these habitats are found in Africa, according to Conservation International. 700 mln ha of these ecosystems are currently degraded, the environmental NGO said.
The Herding for Health programme aims to scale climate-smart livestock grazing practices while enhancing market access for red meat produced on communal lands in Southern Africa.
“Herding for Health is now operational across 2.5 million hectares in 16 locations and six countries throughout Southern Africa,” Werner Myburgh, CEO at Peace Parks Foundation, said in a statement. The programme has a target of scaling the model to 7 mln ha within the next five years.
The programme works across transboundary landscapes, straddling national within or adjacent to protected areas in East and Southern Africa. Two of these landscapes, the Succulent Karoo in Namibia/South Africa and the Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany in South Africa/Mozambique are biodiversity hotspots that have been historically used for red meat production.
The underlying funding was provided Angola, Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, partners, and donors, Conservation International said.
Their announcement is one of several sizeable financial commitments that have been made at Africa Climate Week, including a $22.8 mln announcement for landscape restoration in Lake Kivu and the Greater Rift valley from the Bezos Earth Foundation, and $25 mln from Norway for Ethiopia’s forest protection.
By Tom Woolnough – tom@carbon-pulse.com
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