The Global Evergreening Alliance provides a collaborative platform to support and facilitate large scale environmental restoration and sustainable agricultural intensification. Image © Jason Florio
In 2021, we joined the Global EverGreening Alliance (GEA), a worldwide organisation that has brought together leading research, technical and development practitioners committed to restoring degraded lands, and improving sustainability, as well as the profitability and reliability of smallholder farming systems.
The GEA provides a collaborative platform to support and facilitate large scale environmental restoration and sustainable agricultural intensification – with the goal of increasing biodiversity and both mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change on a globally significant scale.
The GEA promotes nature-based approaches with small-scale farming, pastoralist and forest-dependent communities to restore degraded landscapes and improve the sustainability, productivity, equity and profitability of agricultural and livestock production systems. The GEA approaches are tree-based, restoring tree cover by integrating trees in agricultural and livestock systems (agroforestry) to increase rainwater infiltration, reverse soil erosion, increase soil fertility, diversify incomes and diet, and increase carbon stocks both above and below ground (carbon sequestration).
One of the most effective examples of the GEA’s success is how farmer- managed natural regeneration (FMNR) has reversed deforestation in the Sahel. FMNR is an approach developed by communities in Niger to encourage the natural regeneration of trees from tree stumps, roots and seeds in the soil, avoiding the costs and high mortality rates associated with trying to plant tree seedlings in semi-arid areas.
The GEA leverages money from a wide range of investors to finance evergreening initiatives and foster the development of the EverGreening The Earth campaign, to enable grassroots movements around the world to adopt agroforestry practices. Its progress can be tracked through the dashboard – GRM - Global EverGreening Alliance
In Spring 2022, the GEA secured the first tranche of a US$ 150 million financing package from Climate Asset Management, to kick start ‘Restore Africa’, an initiative that aims to restore 1.9 million hectares of land and directly support 1.5 million smallholder farming families , across six African countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.
We will be a partner in implementing this work through our partners Self Help Africa, with whom we merged last year. Self Help Africa will also have two representatives on the GEA’s Strategic Advisory Committee.