The Role of Sustainable Land Management for Climate ... - CAADP

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3.2 Sustainable Land Management under Climate Change
The relationships between land degradation and sustainable land management and climate
change are complex and multi-directional. Briefly, they can be described by 4 distinct processes:
Climate change effects on land management and land degradation
• Climate change and variability can contribute to land degradation by making current land
management practices unsustainable (e.g, through increased rainfall/flooding) or through
inducing more rapid conversion of land into unsustainable practices.
• Climate change may offer new opportunities for sustainable land management by
enhancing rainfall or growing periods in some places or through creating markets that
might pay farmers for improved sustainable land management practices.
Effects of land degradation/sustainable land management on climate change impacts
• Land degradation increases vulnerability of people to climate variability and change, by
restricting the range of viable rural enterprises, reducing average agricultural productivity
and incomes, increasing production vulnerability, and reducing local resource asset
levels, thus undermining people’s ability to adapt to climate change.
• Sustainable land management can reduce vulnerability to climate change and increase
people’s ability to adapt and in many cases can contribute to climate change mitigation
through improved carbon sequestration and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
analyses.
Each of these relationships is discussed in turn, drawing on both conceptual and empirical
3.2.1: Climate variability and change may exacerbate land degradation
The types of climate change predicted for sub-Saharan Africa – increased temperatures, reduced
rainfall in many places, prolonged droughts, reduced growing periods, and increased high
intensity rainfall events–can intensify degradation from unprotected sites and strain the ability of
existing land management practices to maintain resource quality. Some examples of likely
climate change effects are increased extreme rainfall events causing increased erosion and
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