North Africa Programme

The setting

Adverse climatic conditions and natural processes make North Africa particularly susceptible to land degradation. These factors are often compounded by an unfavourable socio-economic and policy environment, including a growing population, income disparities between rural and urban areas, inadequate incentives for sustainable land management (SLM) and resource-use inefficiencies due to poor coordination.

The fundamental link between land degradation and poverty means that the cost of land degradation is high. Combating desertification is therefore an urgent endeavour requiring concerted action from all stakeholders.

North African countries have historically taken action to arrest land degradation in dry areas. The adoption of the UNCCD however provided the necessary impetus to address the challenges in a more comprehensive manner.

Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia ratified the Convention soon after its adoption and in 2000, requested the GM to assist with the process of implementation by providing strategic guidance and financial support for partnership-building to enhance resource flows. 
 

The approach

The GM’s approach in North Africa has focused on the elaboration and implementation of National Action Programmes, as effective vehicle for improving cross-sector co-operation, development partner coordination and multi-stakeholder participation.

This process has involved regular information exchange with donor partners and the knowledge generated will be the basis for a short and medium-term financing strategy for UNCCD implementation.

In all countries, the GM works closely with the UNCCD National Focal Point institutions in terms of undertaking strategic analyses and organizing partnership-building workshops to facilitate dialogue with national and external stakeholders and reach a common understanding of the challenges and to develop effective responses to them.

At national level the Programme focuses on three priority areas, through which to foster enabling conditions for investment in SLM:

• mainstreaming the UNCCD into national planning processes
• investigating new sources of financing
• capacity-building and strengthening multi-stakeholder coordination.

Fact Sheets:

Tunisia: Mainstreaming the UNCCD into National Planning Processes 

Morocco: Developing a Process-oriented Financing Strategy

Algeria: Strengthening Multi-stakeholder Participation & Institutional Processes

At sub-regional level, the GM has adopted a similar, integrated approach - supporting the Sub-regional Action Programme for the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU SRAP) and the Programme for Promotion of Sustainable Development in Rainfed Areas of West Asia and North Africa (WANA), with a view to complementing NAP activities, promoting information-sharing and the exchange of lessons learnt, and capacity building.

Fact Sheet: Arab Maghreb Union: Promoting Sub-regional Cooperation

Strategic initiatives

SolArid

South-to-south cooperation is widely recognised as an effective tool for mobilizing additional resources and rationalizing the use of existing financial, technical and organizational resources through enhanced consultation and new partnerships at sub-regional, regional and international levels. South-south cooperation provides a strategic opportunity to invest in new approaches to resource mobilization for sustainable land management, which effectively respond to the specific needs of countries affected by desertification and drought, with the ultimate aim of improving their peoples’ livelihoods.

SolArid is the GM’s south-to-south cooperation programme. It brings together the countries of the Sahel and the Sahara, highlighting the specific characteristics of these countries that must be taken into account by the international community when developing strategies to combat desertification and poverty. SolArid aims to establish a permanent network to exchange experiences on resource mobilization strategies, develop financial partnering strategies and foster partnerships.

The international workshop, Decentralisation and Local Development in Arid Zones, (Marrakech, 13-16 April 2006), was a milestone in this process. It brought together regional stakeholders -including inter-governmental organizations and potential donors - to foster a deeper understanding of ongoing initiatives at inter-regional level, explore capacity-building opportunities, identify potential partnerships, and define the modalities for permanent exchanges on desertification issues.

 

SolArid  now has a Steering Committee which has adopted a Work Programme for 2007 and a three-year SolArid Programme for 2007-2009.

 

Lessons learnt

The GM’s North African experience has been particularly enriching to date, given Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia’s different stages of advancement in the process and the relatively high level of political commitment to addressing desertification issues. Some lessons learnt include:

• Mainstreaming the UNCCD into national policy, planning and implementation processes to bring about sustainable financing requires a long-term commitment and concerted efforts from all partners engaged in a coherent, participatory process.
• Developing a financing strategy requires specific knowledge of a country’s policy formulation, planning and budgetary processes and development partners’ programming priorities and procedures so as to build convergence between national and external priorities and procedures.
• All stakeholders and international development cooperation partners must agree on common objectives to achieve sustainability and coherence. Delineating the roles and responsibilities of each promotes efficiency in resource use and mitigates potential conflicts and bottlenecks.
• Participation of not only key line ministries but also non-technical ministries such as finance, planning and international cooperation is critical for engendering national ownership and broadening the intervention options beyond purely technical responses.
• Extensive dialogue and advocacy is required to raise awareness of the Convention, gain consensus on the root causes of land degradation, and identify solutions.
  

The way ahead

The GM will continue to support the countries of North Africa in developing and implementing integrated financing strategies and pursue awareness raising efforts at various levels to promote investments in combating desertification for poverty reduction and achieving global benefits. In the coming years, the GM will seek to identify new financing opportunities arising from decentraliization and the quantification of ecosystems services. It will also support national capacity-building as a means to create an enabling environment for resource mobilisation for UNCCD implementation.

The GM will also support efforts to make policies and programmes coherent, working with development partners to achieve harmonization. As processes take root, the GM will foster the exchange of experiences and lessons learnt between countries, managing knowledge with a view to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of efforts to implement and finance the UNCCD.

For more information:

Mr Youssef Brahimi
Senior Advisor, South-to-South Cooperation Africa
Tel. +39 06 5459 2584
y.brahimi(at)ifad.org

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