Water, forestry, and land use

With half the world’s population set to be living in areas of high water stress by 2030, ensuring water security is an increasingly pressing concern. This requires balancing water demands for basic human needs, livelihoods, and ecosystem services, as well as disaster risk management related to water. We also have expertise in water security economics and finance.

Our work in land use and forestry helps decision makers improve responsible governance of their resources. For instance, we’ve worked with the Indonesian Government to tackle illegal logging and conserve the country’s forests to maintain biodiversity and help alleviate global warming.

Resilient Waters

Our work has improved the natural resource management of over 4 million hectares of land within southern Africa, of which more than half a million hectares is classed as being of significant biological importance and contributes towards the effective conservation of African biodiversity, i.e. is protected as a national park or game reserve, where we have supported national authorities to update and revise Protected Area Management Plans, such as Zinave and Banhine National Parks in Mozambique as well as Chobe National Park and the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana, with plans that capacitate authorities to better prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change and encroachment of land-use change

We have improved the capacity of Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks to monitor wildlife and record incidents of human-wildlife conflict, by developing a digital mapping tool in collaboration with ESRI, a geographic information system company, that is designed to serve the needs of wildlife officers, wildlife safari guides and independent researchers. The tool provides a standardised mechanism for stakeholders to gather and share data on the presence and status of threatened and endangered species.

EU Technical assistance program & Resilient Waters

We have provided technical support to administer and manage the implementation of over $2 million worth of USAID and EC grants provided to local NGOs that have supported sustainable land management interventions, such as climate-resilient agricultural practices and improved forest management in community-managed land that buffers protected areas, whilst supporting land authorities to identify and protect wildlife corridors that traverse across these landscapes.