They realized this just as the effects of climate change – lower crop yields, erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts – are making life harder for millions of farmer communities, herders and city dwellers.
The AFR100 Initiative was born to reverse this destructive trend. Locally led, this program aims to begin restoring 100 million hectares of land by 2030 with a wide variety of techniques that support healthy rural communities and thriving ecosystems.
African leaders had the evidence to back up that goal. Every $1 invested in land restoration can bring $7-30 in economic benefits, and a fully healed nature could provide up to one-third of the cost-effective climate mitigation needed to keep global warming below 2 C. Restored landscapes produce more food while making communities more resilient to desertification, droughts and floods.
They also knew it could be done. Champion farmers like Yacouba Sawadogo mobilized communities to regreen 5 million hectares in the dry Sahel. Through the Green Belt Movement,
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai empowered more than 4,000 women’s groups to protect and restore their farms and Kenya’s forests, even under the threat of death.
Her legacy continues to inspire: Communities in Senegal have grown more than 150 million mangrove buds in the country’s wetlands under the leadership of former minister Haidar el Ali.
That history of grassroots success has inspired 32 African governments to join the AFR100 movement. Countries have created national restoration programs that create jobs for young people, and thousands of local entrepreneurs, nonprofits and cooperatives have mobilized communities to protect and regenerate ecosystems.
But we know that Africa is far from achieving that lofty goal. Even though funders have committed more than $16 billion to AFR100 and the Great Green Wall, little has reached frontline communities. Deforestation and ecosystem degradation continue at a rapid pace.
In 2020 alone, Africa lost 4 million hectares of tree cover according to Global Forest Watch. Political instability and conflict threaten fragile wins. And a few poorly planned tree-planting projects have harmed ecosystems and communities by introducing invasive species and destroying native grasslands.
But the core of the problem is that there is little financial support for the continent that has contributed least to climate change but will suffer from its worst consequences. Governments in developed countries, private sector corporations, and the rich and powerful – the source of most of the world’s carbon pollution – owe a debt to climate innovators in Africa.
Local leadership is key because communities manage nearly 70% of African land, and they know how to make thousands of ecologically and socially sustainable projects bloom. There is no equitable path toward net-zero emissions by 2050 that doesn’t invest in the entrepreneurs and community leaders restoring land.
We need a moonshot for Africa’s restoration movement, and it starts today. African heads of state at COP26 in Glasgow issued a call to action to private funders and government donors: Mobilize $2 billion for locally led African restoration programs by the end of 2022.