Building Resilient Food Systems

Nature+ Program

Restoring landscapes for Sustainable Food Systems in four African countries

When farming and agriculture is your livelihood, degraded land leads to a harder life. Producing enough food for your family and your community becomes significantly more difficult when dealing with challenges of biodiversity loss, unhealthy soils and high levels of poverty. Nearly 40% of small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa experience hunger regularly, compared to only 20% of the overall population, and climate change is making their fight against hunger even more challenging. So why isn’t the land healthy in many rural communities across Africa? There are a few reasons.

Climate change:

  • Hotter than normal weather, where the sun beats so harshly crops and land dry out
  • Hard, dry, cracked land leading to flooding when the sporadic rains come in a deluge instead of an expected pattern

Over-use:

  • Overgrazing which may provide livestock with their food for today, but depletes long-term soil health
  • Mass deforestation to create more farmland, sell as firewood, or create charcoal—short term solutions to hunger that create greater problems in the longer term

Injustice:

  • Lack of secure land rights for farmers, particularly women farmers
  • Women are disproportionately affected by poverty, including many female small-scale farmers

Nature+ Making a Difference

The Nature+ program will help revitalize food systems and build more resilient communities in a set of natural landscapes in Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The project areas are internationally recognized as biodiversity hotspots: places that are rich in biodiversity but are greatly threatened by increasing land degradation. They are also places where most people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

The Nature+ landscape approach to improved food systems seeks to meet the needs of the land itself, its inhabitants, and the institutions that operate there.

Implementing Nature+

This program will involve thirteen locally-based partners who are situated to best design a program that will cater to their specific landscapes, while helping communities reduce their vulnerability to climate change and improve their livelihoods. They will be supported by nine Foodgrains Bank members.

Helping the Land, Helping the People

75,000 women and men in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Ethiopia will be trained to implement various nature-based solutions, such as conservation agriculture, improved water management, and integrated crop and livestock systems.

We’ll work with the communities to improve biodiversity and help to sustainable manage the landscapes all around these farming communities.

This work will lead to more resilient livelihoods, also impacting people living in surrounding communities with stronger access to food and restored landscapes for the future.

Strengthening Voices

This program will also work to empower women and other vulnerable people, so that they can participate and lead in decisions that govern their communities and the landscapes that surround them, including through long-term policy change.

These projects will enable community members to feed themselves, improve their livelihoods, support gender equality and adapt to climate change.

So, what’s next?

Nature+ has bold goals of full transformation of landscapes and livelihoods. This is NOT a short-term project. But right now, we’re focused on laying a strong foundation.

The Canadian government has provided 95% funding to support the first three years of work. It’s our job to pitch in the other 5%.

Please give now to invest in a program that isn’t only focused on today’s impact, but on the impact for generations to come.


Donate today to help us get there

Your gift will help communities in rural areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe reduce their vulnerability to climate change, and improve their own food security through the restoration of healthy landscapes.

Any funds raised above the intended goal will be used for other appeals.


 

    In partnership with Canada

     


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