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David O'Byrne

David O'Byrne

Researcher

David O'Byrne

The Social Impacts of Sustainable Land Management in Great Green Wall Countries: An Evaluative Framework Based on the Capability Approach

Author

  • David O'byrne
  • Altaaf Mechiche-Alami
  • Anna Tengberg
  • Lennart Olsson

Summary, in English

The Great Green Wall Initiative (GGWI) is a pan-African program launched in 2007 to combat land degradation and bring about both ecological and socio-economic benefits in the Sahel. With projects in place on only one-fifth of the targeted land and uncertainty about the extent of positive impacts, there is a need for improved monitoring and evaluation of current projects to inform the design of future projects. In this paper, we focus on the evaluation of socio-economic impacts, drawing on development theory, to relate investments in sustainable land management (SLM) to outcomes in terms of human well-being. We deploy a conceptual model, which draws on both the capability approach to human development and the sustainable livelihood framework. To contextualize the framework to the Sahel, we undertook a literature review of scientific studies of the facilitative social conditions and socio-economic impacts of SLM interventions in four countries: Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger and Ethiopia. We further refined the framework by examining project evaluation reports of Global Environmental Facility (GEF)-funded SLM projects. Our analysis of GEF projects shows that current monitoring and evaluation pays only limited attention to achieved outcomes in terms of well-being. We briefly discuss the application of the framework to SLM interventions and make recommendations for how it should be operationalized, including recommending more comprehensive measurement of the well-being impacts of these projects.

Department/s

  • LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
  • Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science

Publishing year

2022-02-27

Language

English

Publication/Series

Land

Volume

11

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

MDPI AG

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • afforestation
  • deforestation
  • Sustainable development
  • Sahel
  • land degradation

Status

Published

Project

  • Large-scale Assessment of Land Degradation to guide future investment in SLM in the Great Green Wall countries

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2073-445X