Abstract
The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) is a pan-African program launched in 2007 to combat land degradation and bring about both ecological and socio-economic benefits in the Sahel. With projects in place on only one-fifth of the targeted land and uncertainty about the extent of positive impacts, there is a need for improved monitoring and evaluation of current projects to inform the design of future projects. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of socio-economic impacts, drawing on development theory, to relate investments in sustainable land management (SLM) to outcomes in terms of human well-being. We deploy a conceptual model, which draws on both the capability approach to human development and the sustainable livelihood framework. To contextualize the framework to the Sahel, we undertook a literature review of scientific studies of the facilitative social conditions and socio-economic impacts of SLM interventions in four countries: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Ethiopia. We further refined the framework by examining project evaluation reports of Global Environmental Facility (GEF)-funded SLM projects. Our analysis of GEF projects shows that current monitoring and evaluation pays only limited attention to achieved outcomes in terms of well-being. We briefly discuss the application of the framework to SLM interventions and make recommendations for how it should be operationalized, including recommending more comprehensive measurement of the well-being impacts of these projects.
Highlights
Since the 1960s, the Sahel region of Africa has been reported to suffer from desertification and land degradation caused by a combination of complex interactions between social, economic and environmental systems
The results show that the average annual costs of land degradation due to land use and land cover changes in the entire Sahel region during the 2001–2018 period were equal to USD 3 billion
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Summary
Since the 1960s, the Sahel region of Africa has been reported to suffer from desertification and land degradation caused by a combination of complex interactions between social, economic and environmental systems. It is difficult to assess the overall patterns of land degradation across the Sahel region, i.e., whether it is “greening” or “browning” in general [1]. Land degradation is a very contextual phenomenon and cannot “be judged independently of its spatial, temporal, economic, environmental and cultural context” [5]. This makes it difficult to establish measurable indicators, remotely sensed or otherwise [6]. At the local scale, land degradation is real, and many local communities experience its effects, as rainfed agriculture and/or livestock production are the main livelihood activities of around 75% of the Sahelian population [7]. Poverty levels are among the highest in the world with low indicators for health, education and standard of living [8]
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