Ecosystem-based Adaptation in the Comoros

Project Title 

Building climate resilience through rehabilitated watersheds, forests and adaptive livelihoods

Project factsheet

Key Figures

  • Budget: USD 5.14 million (co-finance: USD 11.9 million)
  • Executing Entity: Department of Environment and Forests - Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment, Land-use Planning and Town Planning
  • Area rehabilitated: 3,500 hectares of watersheds, sustainably managed on three islands
  • Beneficiaries (target): More than 40,000 individuals
  • Fund: Least Developed Countries Fund
  • Timeframe: 2017-2022

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.

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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