The Social Impacts of Sustainable Land Management in Great Green Wall Countries: An Evaluative Framework Based on the Capability Approach

Abstract

The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) is a pan-African program launched in 2007 to combat land degradation and bring about both ecological and socio-economic benefits in the Sahel. With projects in place on only one-fifth of the targeted land and uncertainty about the extent of positive impacts, there is a need for improved monitoring and evaluation of current projects to inform the design of future projects. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of socio-economic impacts, drawing on development theory, to relate investments in sustainable land management (SLM) to outcomes in terms of human well-being. We deploy a conceptual model, which draws on both the capability approach to human development and the sustainable livelihood framework. To contextualize the framework to the Sahel, we undertook a literature review of scientific studies of the facilitative social conditions and socio-economic impacts of SLM interventions in four countries: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Ethiopia. We further refined the framework by examining project evaluation reports of Global Environmental Facility (GEF)-funded SLM projects. Our analysis of GEF projects shows that current monitoring and evaluation pays only limited attention to achieved outcomes in terms of well-being. We briefly discuss the application of the framework to SLM interventions and make recommendations for how it should be operationalized, including recommending more comprehensive measurement of the well-being impacts of these projects.

Social Impact Measurement: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

“…Improving understanding of how to allocate resources [24]. Developing internal learning tools [8] that can inform future projects [84] and support decision making [6].…”

Reforestation and sylvopastoral systems in Sahelian drylands: evaluating return on investment from provisioning ecosystem services, Senegal

“…Households with high livestock incomes derive almost no income from the marketing of NTFPs. The collection of NTFPs remains a profound social marker (O'Byrne et al, 2022).…”

“…The GGW Accelerator, initiated in 2021, aims to scale up these restoration operations to 100 million hectares with the objective of enhancing the economic benefits for civil society organizations (CSOs) (Sacande et al, 2022a). It is therefore timely to reflect on the economic viability of restoration practices for agro-pastoral populations living in rural areas of the Sahel (Mirzabaev et al, 2022;O'Byrne et al, 2022;Sacande et al, 2021;Turner et al, 2021).…”

Evaluating the scaling potential of sustainable land management projects in the Sahelian Great Green Wall countries

“…The lowest ratings are reported in terms of financial sustainability and implementation of M&E systems [16]. Nevertheless, there might be some bias associated with the reporting itself, as the GEF reports generally put more effort into measuring direct impacts on ecosystem changes and capacity building activities [17].…”

“…The GEF land degradation report recommends that tracking tools include more appropriate biophysical indicators and baselines as well as geospatial data in order to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of monitoring land degradation and progress towards achieving LDN [16]. Improved socio-economic monitoring is also necessary in order to relate investments in SLM to impacted populations' well-being [17].…”