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Angola has a total land area of approximately 1.247 billion square kilometres, of which 43% is permanent grassland and pasture. Indigenous groups such as the Herero, Khoisan and Muimba, who rely on traditional methods to manage pastoral and agro-pastoral systems, live in the southern provinces of Angola (Namibe, Cunene and some municipalities of Huila). The persistent drought, overgrazing and other factors of the past few years have forced them to adapt to a new reality. Improving rangeland management is now more important than ever to provide adequate feed for the animals, which are the socio-cultural capital and economic reserve of indigenous communities. With financial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the involvement of indigenous communities and their ancestral knowledge, FAO has helped strengthen the capacities of agro-pastoralists in southwestern Angola to reduce the impacts of land degradation and increase the restoration of degraded lands.
FAO’s three main priorities in improving livelihoods in Angola are strengthening smallholder production and productivity to improve food security and nutrition, enhancing the sustainable management of natural resources, and increasing the resilience of rural livelihoods to climate shocks and climate change.
Angola has a total land area of approximately 1.247 billion square kilometers, of which 43% is permanent grassland and pasture. Indigenous groups such as the Herero, Khoisan and Muimba live in the southern provinces of Angola and rely on traditional methods to manage pastoralism and agriculture. The continued drought, overgrazing and other factors in the past few years have forced them to adapt to the new reality.
Restoring land and improving livelihoods
To address the critical issue of land degradation in Angola and promote the development of sustainable food and agricultural systems, FAO has been promoting the Land Programme for a decade.
An ongoing intervention in the southwestern provinces of Angola aims to mitigate the effects of degradation processes and restore affected lands by incorporating locally adapted sustainable land management (SLM) techniques into agro-pastoral and agricultural development activities.
Training was provided to 2 800 smallholder pastoralist families through Farmer Field Schools. In addition to creating a more enabling environment to support the sustained flow of agro-ecosystem services, the project also helped to strengthen and diversify livestock and non-pastoral value chains.
The reduction of fertile land and population growth are the main causes of disputes in the region, especially between peasants and commercial farmers, traditional herders, commercial herders and returning refugees, who are fighting to regain access to land. Techniques such as restoring pastoral areas with leguminous trees and shrubs can improve and maintain soil fertility, allowing communities to diversify their livelihoods.
Mainstreaming local best practices
Over the centuries, Angola’s pastoral system has proven to be best suited to the region’s arid and semi-arid ecosystems, with high resilience and the ability to adapt to a changing environment. FAO’s work is therefore based on the participation of indigenous communities, their ancestral knowledge and the mainstreaming of local best practices to reverse land degradation processes. The two main tools used are Agro-Pastoral Farmer Field Schools (APFS) and Participatory and Consultative Territorial Development (PNTD).
FAO is currently building a strong APFS network within the project area to facilitate knowledge sharing among beneficiaries in an endogenous way, i.e. local communities determine where and how they want to receive support. So far, a core group of 40 APFS Master Trainers from government agencies, NGOs and civil society organizations have been certified and are currently mentoring more than 80 APFS trainers who are either agro-pastoralists or pastoralists. Their role is to mobilize pastoralist communities and facilitate the development of practical comparative experiences based on the learning curriculum developed by APFS members.
“Without rain, people face big problems. They become very poor and start asking others for help,” said a beneficiary from the Mukubal tribe, a subgroup of the Herero people in Namibia. “Now we understand that we have to share knowledge and help each other so that no one will be poor.”
The PNTD approach, on the other hand, is a facilitation process that seeks to promote development through dialogue and negotiation. It aims to facilitate the creation of a negotiating table where different stakeholders, often with opposing interests, can sit together and work towards a common agreement on the development of their territories.
By 2018 (the projected end date of the intervention), the project aims to achieve two main objectives: directly reach 2,800 people, ensuring that at least 30% of them are women, and indirectly reach more than 20,000 people.
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
FAO is an implementing agency of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an international co-financing mechanism that provides grants to countries to invest in global environmental projects that address the critical nexus between agriculture and the environment. This includes climate change, biodiversity, land degradation, international waters and chemicals. With the global population set to exceed 9 billion by 2050, the challenge is to sustainably increase food production by 60 percent over the same period, while maintaining the natural resource base for future generations.
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