Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
Through the Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Programme (DSLIP), Zimbabwe is addressing key management challenges in dryland areas to improve the livelihoods of local communities.
As part of the Global Environment Facility’s initiative, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), alongside partners from the Forest and Farm Facility, is providing business incubation support focused on specific themes for forest and farm producer organizations across the Miombo-Mopane eco-region, which includes Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe.
Under the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), IIED will collaborate with FAO’s Farmer Field School and Community Seed Bank units to implement an integrated technical support package known as the Sustainable Landscape Production Framework (SLPF).
Speaking at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Conference of the Parties (COP16) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Thursday, DSLIP Zimbabwe National project coordinator, Mrs Precious Magwaza outlined how Zimbabwe’s drylands had been the most affected by the El Nino induced drought.
“Most of the inhabitants in the drylands are basing on forests as a livelihood option. Communities will move into forests as part of their settlement and there is invasion of land by alien species such as lantana camara.
“On the cropland farming, as a country we are faced with droughts that are affecting Southern Africa. For farmers then the Miombo-Mopane woodlands become their safety nets for food security,” she said.
She said with forests becoming the source of food security and provisions of livelihoods, this then exerts a lot of pressure on them.
Mrs Magwaza said under DSLIP which is covering districts in the Save and Runde catchments of Zimbabwe, they were coming in to promote and support the extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as a livelihood option.
“The move to support the extraction of NTFPs as a livelihood option will minimise excessive deforestation as some communities are now resorting to charcoal production as a livelihood option.
“As a project, we are also looking in to influencing policy formulation on extraction of NTFP’s in order to safeguard against over extraction. This is why as the DSLIP we are promoting the baobab and marula value chains in communities like Chipinge, Chimanimani and Chivi,” she added.
She said from an assessment that was done they realised that an estimated 320 million people in dryland areas in Africa depend on NTFPs.
Mrs Magwaza said they were ensuring trhat communities develop businesses around NTFPs and mainstream sustainable forest management.
As a country one of the areas we are implementing the project is in Chivi, we realised that a 100 percent of the sample that was involved in a study indicated that they are actually surviving on NTFPs.
The 2024 COP16 being held from December 02 to 13 is running under the theme: “Our Land. Our Future.”
Drylands are said to be the most affected by droughts and there are growing calls for resilience building in dryland areas.
