Ecosystem-based Adaptation in the Comoros

Project Title 

Building climate resilience through rehabilitated watersheds, forests and adaptive livelihoods

Project factsheet

Description

In the Comoros, many people are facing water shortages due to increasingly erratic and reduced rainfall. This project is helping these people harvest and retain water by rehabilitating 3,500 hectares of watershed habitat. The project aims to plant 1.4 million trees over the course of four years across the country’s three islands. For farmers living within increasingly parched and degraded watersheds, this ecological restoration will prevent their soils from drying-up and being washed downhill.

Training will be provided to local communities to manage and protect their land and watersheds, as well as Government staff on improved ecosystem-based land-use planning, climate-resilient agriculture and water resource management. Households in the project sites are expected to gain a 20% increase in average annual income by the end of the 4 year project. The Comoros is a vital hotspot of endemism and biodiversity, and as such, these project interventions will contribute to the conservation of globally significant species.

The Department of Environment is implementing the project in close collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and Land Use Planning, as well as the National Institute for Research in Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment (INRAPE) and the Department of Water and Mines.

Media & Resources

• Story: When the rains come: Fighting climate change with forecasting in the Comoros
• Story: “Where there used to be so much, there is so little”: The challenge of climate change in the Comoros
• Video: Climate Action in the Comoros
• Project factsheet
• GEF project webpage
• Find more climate adaptation resources and multimedia

Gallery

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For more information about the project or UNEP’s work in climate adaptation, contact us here UNEP-Climate-Adaptation@un.org