Restoring Ecosystems to Reduce Drought Risk and Increase Resilience

By the end of the project in 2024, IUCN and local partners:

• Mobilized over EUR 1.1 million to enable ecosystem restoration in local communities, capture ongoing challenges caused by drought in the project countries, and strengthen national drought strategies and risk management frameworks.
• Reached more than 170,000 beneficiaries across 3 countries, over half of whom were women.
• Put more than 100 hectares of land under restoration or improved management, with ambitions by community members to increase that figure by more than 20-fold in the future.
• Promoted knowledge exchange and lessons sharing while attempting to break silos between natural resource management agencies. For example, in Georgia, a capacity-building workshop was organized which brought together over 45 participants from civil society, grassroots organizations, and national government agencies.
• Highlighted the unique and often disproportionate effects of drought on women and girls, as well as solutions to increase gender equity in drought management.
• Included stakeholder participation from Indigenous peoples in Kenya and internally displaced persons in Burkina Faso, promoting a sense of community ownership over restoration activities and improving community understanding of the benefits of nature-based solutions (NbS).

These successes were highlighted at UNCCD COP16, where IUCN, the Austrian Development Cooperation, and partners reaffirmed a collective commitment to combatting drought, addressing global land degradation, and supporting local communities in building resilience to climate change and natural disasters.