Burkina Faso’s Scenarios for Land Based Mitigation – A Summary for Policymakers
We’ve come up with an LMT portfolio for Burkina Faso that includes cropland management, forest management, afforestation, and reducing deforestation. In our new report, we explore how these land-use practices might become widely adopted in Burkina Faso, and identify some of their possible additional benefits and barriers.
The full scenario analysis for Burkina Faso can be found here, with key messages summarized in the sections below.
Cropland Management
In Burkina Faso, over-farming, over-grazing and the increasing pressures of climate change are have resulted in the degradation of some of the country’s most important land. To reverse this, a number of smallholder farmers are implementing a number of soil and water conservation techniques on desertic and unfertile land.
These practices include relatively simple and inexpensive measures like zai pits, half-moons, and permeable rock contour barriers. Zai pits are planting pits that try to rehabilitate soil by increasing termite activity, which increases rainfall infiltration. Contour barriers are rocks tightly stacked together to a field in order to trap water and avoid soil erosion during heavy rain events. Half-moons are other structures in semi-circular form that aim at retaining run-off for crop production. These practices are low-cost and can be combined into more complex systems.
Another means of restoring degraded lands is via creating agroforestry parklands -- dynamic systems where indigenous trees are planted and grow under protection on cropped or grazed land. The micro-climate created by the trees allow to increase the productivity of crops around/under the trees.
These techniques have been shown to increase crop yield and improve food security and rural poverty. In the past, rural poverty was reduced by 50% between 1985 and 1996, partly through the implementation of techniques like these. Soil and water conservation measures also reduce streamflow and erosion which sometime dry up wells during the dry season.
Forest Management
Burkina Faso’s dry forests are badly affected by rising temperatures, droughts, extreme rain events and bushfires. Implementing forest management practices known as Assisted Natural Regeneration is one way that land-users in Burkina Faso could combat this. Assisted Natural Regeneration is way in which people can help trees and native vegetation recover naturally by eliminating barriers and threats to their growth – like bushfires, animal grazing, human activity and weeds. It tends to lean heaving on local knowledge of the land.
It's simple, cheap, and provides diverse and well-adapted tree species.
The co-benefits of implementing Assisted Natural Regeneration are that it could lead to more carbon sequestration, as well as restoring of soil fertility, biodiversity, and increase the availability of forest products.
But for Assisted Natural Regeneration to take off on a large scale, it’s important to have clear land tenure, supportive policies, benefits that accrue to local stakeholders, and technical expertise.
Reforestation, Afforestation, and forest classification
Deforestation and the exploitation of deforested land are the main emitters of CO2 in Burkina Faso. Deforestation in Burkina Faso is mainly a result of land expansion for agriculture and livestock farming, bushfires, overharvesting for fuelwood and non-timber products as well as gold mining.
Since the 1970s, Burkina Faso has implemented several initiatives to maintain and increase its forest cover. Among these initiatives, priority is given to reforestation, afforestation, and forest protection. However deforestation is still significantly outpacing afforestation in Burkina Faso: the area of planted forests is estimated to be only 10% of the surface of land deforested each year.
Stepping up reforestation, afforestation and forest classification efforts in Burkina Faso can strengthen the resilience of ecosystems and people to climate change and strengthen rural income and GDP development. (The non-timber products forest provide play a major role in the alleviation of rural poverty).
These currently reforestation efforts are primarily carried out by villagers and rural communities, with the support of both state and non-state actors. A lack of interest in the project by those villagers is one of the potential barriers to scaling up these practices in Burkina Faso.
Reducing Deforestation
One of the major drivers of deforestation is that households in Burkina Faso rely heavily on fuelwood, charcoal and crop residues for their energy needs.
As a result, one of the ways the government is trying to slow deforestation is by encouraging the use of improved cook stoves and biodigesters. Biodigesters use microbes and other bacteria to break down organic materials. When used in the home, biodigesters can transform a household’s organic waste (food scraps) into cooking gas for their kitchen.
The National Biodigesters Program (PNB-BF) for example, was established in 2010 and has successfully installed biodigesters in households. By 2018, the program had saved 311 hectares of forest and sequestered 17,500 tons of CO2 annually. Biodigesters are being used by both rural and urban populations, as well as industrially. This initiative is primarily supported by the government as well as the sale of carbon credits.
Conclusions
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in Africa with a population growth rate of 3.5%. The majority of the population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture and livestock. The country is divided into three major climatic zones, each with different levels of vegetation cover. Estimates of Burkina Faso's forest cover vary, but recent statistics report 21% of the total land area is covered by forests. The land is used for various purposes including urban development, agriculture, grazing, mining, forest management, and exploitation.
Despite these activities, Burkina Faso offers potential for addressing climate change and poverty alleviation. Strengthening the management of forest resources can enhance adaptation to climate change impacts and create positive effects for poverty reduction through increased forest production and agricultural productivity. However, achieving these co-benefits requires a transformational shift toward an integrated landscape approach to natural resource management.
This approach would seek to balance local development with measures to mitigate deforestation and forest degradation in different ecosystems. By adopting such strategies, Burkina Faso can seize a unique opportunity for a triple win of mitigation, adaptation, and poverty alleviation.
