Salonga-Lukeni-Sankuru CARPE landscape programDemocratic Republic of Congo

Background 1 2 3

The Congo Basin forests form the second largest block of rainforest in the world after the Amazon. These forests represent a huge carbon sink, are extremely rich in flora and fauna, and are home to more than 30 million people. However, the use of resources and ecosystem services for supporting both livelihood and economic development is putting increasing pressure on the forests. Some of the consequences of deforestation and forest degradation are forest fragmentation with negative consequences for both biodiversity and increased emissions of greenhouse gases. A landscape approach offers opportunities to foster connectivity and to promote positive interactions, increase species richness and habitat suitability, as well as to address some of the drivers of deforestation and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) is a 25-year-old Congo Basin regional program funded by USAID. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) leads the management of all CARPE activities in the Salonga-Lukeni-Sankuru (SLS) landscape in collaboration with local village management committees and more than fifteen partners located in five towns within the Salonga-Lukenie-Sankuru (SLS) landscape in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The vision of the SLS CARPE landscape program is to maintain large areas of forests intact within the landscape and to ensure the conservation of biodiversity while also promoting human well-being.

Contributions to CSA

Some of the activities of SLS CARPE target livelihood and food security needs. For example, activities include sustainable fishing practices, the rearing of pigs and chickens, and sustainable farming practices that both reduce deforestation and increase the productivity of groundnuts, cowpea, rice, beans and maize. The aim is that by improving livelihoods, illegal activities such as poaching and bush meat hunting will be reduced along with the overall human pressure on the SLS landscape. Maintaining the forest intact provides an enormous potential to mitigate the effects of global climate change.

Impacts and lessons learned

So far, the SLS CARPE landscape program has achieved several conservation, livelihood and development objectives. Moving forward will entail increased capacity in implementation, improved data for planning, continuous engagement of multiple stakeholders, and the mobilization of additional funds for landscape activities.

References

  • 1

    Minang PA, van Noordwijk M, Freeman OE, Mbow C, de Leeuw J, Catacutan D, (Eds.). 2015. Climate-Smart Landscapes: Multifunctionality in Practices. Nairobi, Kenya: World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

    http://theredddesk.org/sites/default/files/resources/pdf/climate-smart_landscapes.pdf

    Landscape approaches present opportunities for sustainable development by enhancing opportunities for synergy between multiple objectives in landscapes (i.e., social, economic and environmental). They challenge the ‘one-place-one-function’ concept of specialization that sees agriculture, forest and urban spheres as ‘silos’. Drawing on a large range of case studies from predominantly the humid, sub-humid and dry tropics across the world, this book provides directly applicable knowledge, while also highlighting key issues requiring further work. Written for researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike, this book links theory to practice. Building on earlier concepts laid out in earlier volumes, this book explores four central propositions on climate-smart and multifunctional landscape approaches: A. Current landscapes are a suboptimal member of a set of locally feasible landscape configurations; B. Actors and interactions can nudge landscapes towards better managed tradeoffs within the set of feasible configurations, through engagement, investment and interventions; C. Climate is one of many boundary conditions for landscape functioning; D. Theories of change must be built within theories of place for effective location-specific engagement.

  • 2

    Yanggen D, Angu K, Tchamou N, (Eds.). 2010. Landscape-scale conservation in the Congo Basin: Lessons learned from CARPE. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.

    https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/2010-037.pdf This introductory chapter provides a presentation of the structure of a series of Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) case studies.
  • 3

    de Marcken P. 2014. CARPE II and III: WWF landscape programs. Washington, DC: Presentation during CARPE partners meeting, January 27-28, 2014.

    http://carpe.umd.edu/resources/Meeting_pres/WWF_landscapes_01272014.pdf This source is a selection of slides from a 2014 presentation by Paya de Marcken of WWF, concerning the WWF Landscape Programs CARPE II and III.

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CCAFS Climate-Smart Agriculture 101

Case Studies

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The basics

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrative approach to address these interlinked challenges of food security and climate change, that explicitly aims for three objectives:

A. Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity, to support equitable increases in farm incomes, food security and development;

B. Adapting and building resilience of agricultural and food security systems to climate change at multiple levels; and

C. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture (including crops, livestock and fisheries).

Entry points

Agriculture affects and is affected by climate change in a wide range of ways and there are numerous entry points for initiating CSA programmes or enhancing existing activities. Productivity, mitigation and adaptation actions can take place at different technological, organizational, institutional and political levels. To help you navigate these myriad entry points we have grouped them under three Thematic Areas: (i) CSA practices, (ii) CSA systems approaches, and (iii) Enabling environments for CSA. Each entry point is then described and analysed in terms of productivity, adoption and mitigation potential and is illustrated with cases studies, references and internet links for further information.

Develop a CSA plan

Planning for, implementing and monitoring CSA projects and programmes evolves around issues of understanding the context including identification of major problems/barriers and opportunities related to the focus of the programme; developing and prioritizing solutions and designing plans; implementation; and monitoring and evaluation. Most major development agencies have their own framework for project and programme formulation and management but CCAFS has developed a specific approach for planning, implementing and assessing CSA projects and programme called CSA plan. CSA plan was developed to provide a guide for operationalizing CSA planning, implementation and monitoring at scale. CSA plan consist of four major components: (1) Situation analysis; (2) Targeting and prioritizing; (3) Program support; and (4) Monitoring. evaluation and learning.

Finance

To meet the objectives of CSA, such as agricultural development, food security and climate change adaptation and mitigation, a number of potential funding sources are available. For instance, climate finance sources may be used to leverage agriculture finance and mainstream climate change into agricultural investments. This section offers an overview of potential sources of funding for activities in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) at national, regional and international levels and for a number of different potential ‘clients’ including governments, civil society, development organizations and others. Additionally, it includes options to search among a range of funding opportunities according to CSA focus area, sector and financing instrument.

Resource library

CSA Guide provides a short and concise introduction and overview of the multifaceted aspects of climate-smart agriculture. At the same time it offers links to references and key resources that allows for further investigations and understanding of specific topics of interest. In the resource library we have gathered all the references, key resources, terms and questions in one place for a quick overview and easy access that can be used as a part of or independently of the other sections of the website. The resource library is divided into six sections; (1) References – list all publications, links and blogs referred to on the website; (2) Tools – list all the CSA tools presented on the website; (3) Key terms – explains the most important and frequently used terms related to CSA; (4) Frequently asked questions (FAQ) – provides a rapid overview of the most common questions asked on climate-smart agriculture; (5) About – where you can find out more about the purpose and structure of, as well as on the organizations and authors behind the website; (6) Contact.

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