Feature: Restore Africa’s degraded land – Climate Adaptation Summit
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Land is one of Africa’s most abundant resources, but it has become degraded across large swathes of the continent. Restoring the productivity of land will form a vital part of Africa’s sustainable adaptation to climate change – the Climate Adaptation Summit heard this week. CDKN’s Mairi Dupar reports.
“Land restoration has a positive impact on the economy, on business, on biodiversity and is a carbon sink, so you have multiple opportunities that can be achieved through land restoration,” Ibrahaim Thiaw told the Climate Adaptation Summit this week.
Speaking at a special Africa-focused event, Mr Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, said that if African governments were serious about “building back better” from the Covid-19 pandemic, then “we have to invest heavily in land restoration and in ecosystem-based adaptation” to climate change. This