Sustainable Land and Water Management

The Government of Ghana aims to demonstrate improved sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices to reduce land degradation and maintain biodiversity in selected microwatersheds and build capacity for upscaling in northern Ghana. The project combines soft and hard investments at the community level with planning activities. It aims to support the sustainable development Initiative for the northern region by: (i) piloting innovative models for grassroots watershed management; and (ii) providing technical tools and capacity for macro-level planning as a basis for eventual scale-up linked to a program of larger-scale flood and watershed management investments. More specifically, the project uses integrated planning and supports community flood and land management at the micro-watershed level, including both management of agricultural land and ecological infrastructure. It also finances national monitoring of SLWM policy and implementation, and an evaluation and strategy for payment for ecosystem services (PES) to support SLWM in northern Ghana. The project will contribute to carbon sequestration and increased resilience of the beneficiary communities to climatic variability.