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Rwandan farmers plant millions of seedlings in landscape restoration initiative

Partnership aims to integrate trees into croplands and expand evergreen agriculture
, Saturday, 8 Aug 2020
Terraced landscape in Northern Karongi in Rwanda. GLF/Elie Ntirengaya

More than 4 million tree seedlings have been planted by farmers as part of an agroforestry policy implemented by the government of Rwanda, which supports landscape restoration, according to a report in Rwanda’s New Times Daily newspaper.

The Regreening Africa initiative is a partnership led by World Agroforestry and non-governmental organizations. It involves 500,000 households living on 1 million hectares of land in eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

The aim of the partnership is to integrate trees into croplands, communal and pastoral areas and expand evergreen agriculture, using techniques suited to local conditions, including Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration, as well as tree planting and other forms of agroforestry.

Complementary sustainable land management interventions are also deployed as part of the project, which includes a Land Degradation Surveillance Framework, a mobile-based Android application and vegetation monitoring using ground surveys and restoration activities.

Through its agroforestry efforts, Rwanda aims to contribute to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, meet its Nationally Determined Contributions under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and achieve international deforestation targets.

This research was supported by the European Union
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