About

REAL NbS is a multi-institution interdisciplinary research project focused on enhancing climate resilience of farming and agro-pastoralist communities in eastern Africa by co-developing equitable nature-based solutions to land degradation, and supporting their implementation.

 

About the project 

Land degradation is a critical problem in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which exacerbates vulnerabilities to climate change among agro-pastoralist and farming communities in the region. It increases exposure and sensitivity of agro-ecological systems to climate impacts and reduces effectiveness of climate adaptation options, undermining resilience of the affected communities.

It is essential to find effective solutions to mitigating land degradation and implement them successfully in order to strengthen climate resilience of agro-pastoralist and farming communities in SSA and build pathways for climate resilient development. The proposed project aims to achieve this with a focus on nature-based solutions (NbS).

Our aim is to strengthen climate resilience of agro-pastoralist and farming communities in SSA by co-developing and testing equitable NbS to land degradation, assessing their feasibility and scalability, and exploring evidence-based pathways to facilitating implementation of such solutions by stakeholders. To achieve this, we will advance an interdisciplinary and community-based approach, engaging cutting-edge research in soil and agricultural science, group psychology and anthropology, and development studies, as well as stakeholder knowledge and collaboration of local NGOs, civil society organisations, and policy-makers.

 

This work is supported by UK Research and Innovation Building a Green Future strategic theme, Building a Secure and Resilient World strategic theme, Natural Environment Research Council, and the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (grant number NE/Z503447/1).