Climate change and land use change in Sub-Saharan Africa: Investments for agriculture, livelihoods, and conservation

Climate change and land use change are two major drivers of global change that have and will have large impacts on ecosystems and human lives. While their synergistic impacts are likely to provide even larger challenges to sustainable development, the two forces are rarely considered jointly. Paper 1 highlights key trends and considerations in climate change and land use change in Sub-Saharan Africa. The objective of the paper is to point out several areas and themes for policy and investment that are in largest need of funding for climate change adaptation or improved land use practices. The objective of paper 2 is to assess whether current funding for climate adaptation and conservation is flowing to areas where the current and expected impacts of climate and land use change are expected to be highest. Paper 3 assesses to what extent available ecosystem information is taken into account in investment decision-making. Based on the identified gaps between available ecosystem information and ecosystem information that is used for decision-making, a framework will be developed for improved (investment) decision-making. A case study of an integrated landscape approach in Liberia is provided in paper 4. The paper will assess a landscape project that works on land restoration and forest protection in combination with cocoa agroforestry to improve the local community’s livelihoods and income, as well as improve the state of the forests and biodiversity of the landscape’s ecosystems. The paper focuses specifically on the contribution of public and private investments to integrated landscape management.