Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has experienced the most severe land degradation in the world. Given that livelihoods of the majority of the rural poor heavily depend on natural resources, countries in the region have designed a number of policies and strategies to address land degradation and to enhance productivity. However investment from both countries and their development partners has remained low, especially for livestock, which accounts for the largest area degraded. Our results show that conversion of grassland to cropland and deforestation are the major factors driving land use/cover change (LUCC). One of the major reasons leading farmers to convert grassland to cropland is the low livestock productivity. The increasing demand for livestock products provides an ample opportunity to the value of grasslands and in turn livestock productivity. Given that donor funding accounts for the largest share of expenditure on agriculture and natural resource management in most SSA countries, econometric analysis showed that donor funding reduces the cost of land degradation. This positions donors in a position of influencing efforts to combat land degradation in SSA. The fact that SSA has poor marketing infrastructure suggests that its improvement will enhance efforts to address low productivity and land degradation. Econometric analysis showed that access to market leads to a reduction of the cost of land degradation related to LUCC. Improvement of market infrastructure will achieve a win-win benefit as it will improve natural resources and reduce poverty. Consistent with results from other regions, improvement of government effectiveness reduces cost of land degradation and cropland expansion. This illustrates the key role played by governance in mediating the drivers of land degradation. Efforts to increase adoption of integrated soil fertility management will require improvement of access to markets, advisory services and retraining of agricultural extension services. There is also need to find practical and amenable strategies for incentivizing farmers to use ISFM. For example, conditional fertilizer subsidy could provide incentives for farmers to adopt nitrogen fixing agroforestry trees and improve significantly the current subsidy programs in several SSA countries. Overall, our results show that SSA has the potential to become the breadbasket of the world but it has to significantly improve its market access and government effectiveness to create incentives for land holders to invest in land improvement. The increasing demand for land, urbanization, and other global regional changes are creating a conducive condition for taking action against land degradation. These opportunities should be exploited effectively as they lead to win-win outcomesreducing poverty and achieving sustainable land management.

Niger's colonial and post-independence natural resource management policies contributed to land degradation. The country also experienced a prolonged drought that amplified the suffering of the people who are heavily dependent on natural resources. The country learnt hard lessons from its past mistakes and changed its policies and strategies. This study shows a strong association of the policy changes and improved human welfare demonstrating that even poor countries could achieve sustainable development. Enhancing government effectiveness by giving communities mandate to manage natural resources and by giving incentives to land users to benefit from their investment played a key role in realizing simultaneous improvement in land management and human welfare in Niger. Given these achievements, Niger was picked as a case study to showcase its achievement and what other countries could learn from the country's mistakes and achievements. The analytical approach used focuses on estimation of cost of land degradation, ground-truthing of satellite data and drivers of adoption of sustainable land management practices. Land use/cover change (LUCC) analysis shows that a total of 6.12 million ha experienced LUCC and shrublands and grassland accounted for the largest change. Excluding the desert, 19 % of the land area experienced LUCC. Cropland expansion accounted for about 57 % of deforestation followed by grassland expansion. The cost of land degradation due to LUCC is about 2007 US$0.75 billion, which is 11 % of the 2007 GDP of US$6.773 billion and 1 % of the 2001 value of ecosystem services (ES) in Niger. Every US dollar invested in taking action returns about $6-a level that is quite attractive. Ground-truthing showed high level of agreement between satellite data and communities perception on degraded lands but poor agreement in areas for which satellite data showed land improvement. Communities also reported that tree planting and protection were the most common actions against land degradation. Tree planting was done mainly on bare lands to fix sand dunes. In summary, this study shows that severe land degradation and the consequent negative impacts on human welfare is a low-hanging fruit that needs to be utilized by countries as they address land degradation. This implies that instead of abandoning severely degraded lands, strategies should be used to rehabilitate such lands using low-cost organic soil fertility management practices and progressively followed by using high cost inputs as soil fertility improves. Improvement of access to rural services and facilitation of non-farm activities will also lead to faster and greater impacts on adoption of SLM practices and increasing resilience to agricultural production shocks in Niger. As Niger continues to improve sustainable land management, it faces daunting challenges to alleviate the high cost of land degradation. Niger serves as a success story to the world in addressing land degradation. Both the national and international communities need to learn from ...

In response to the needs for estimating the cost of grassland degradation to determine the cost of inaction and for identifying cost-effective strategies to address the consequent loss of livestock productivity, we developed a modeling framework where global statistics databases and remote sensing data/analyses coupled with empirical/statistical modeling are designed to quantify the global cost of grassland degradation. By using this framework, we identified grassland degradation hotspots over the period of 2001 to 2011 and estimated changes in livestock productivity associated with changes in grassland productivity within the hotspots. Ignoring environmental benefits and losses in live weight of livestock not slaughtered or sold, the cost of livestock productivity was estimated about 2007 US $6.8 billion. Although on-farm cost is small in Sub-Saharan Africa due to the low livestock productivity, the impact on human welfare would be much more severe in the region where majority of the population is below the poverty line. This implies that addressing grassland degradation is even more urgent in the region, given the increasing demand for livestock products and the potential contribution to poverty reduction. Taking action toward grassland degradation could simultaneously reduce poverty and promote carbon sequestration while conserving socio-economic, cultural, and ecological benefits that livestock provide.

Identification of factors catalyzing sustainable land management (SLM) could provide insights for national policies and international efforts to address land degradation. Building on previous studies, and using novel datasets, this chapter identifies major drivers of land degradation at global and regional levels. The findings of this study confirm the earlier insights in the literature on the context-specific nature of the drivers of land degradation. This context-dependence explains the previous contradictions in the literature on the effects of various socio-economic and institutional factors on land degradation. It also calls for the localized diagnostic of the drivers of land degradation. The drivers of land degradation are predominantly local, so actions to address them should be based on the understanding of the local interplay of various factors and how they affect land degradation.

Weather volatility is increasing, hence the need to build resilience for farmers and the poor, who are affected the most. Using Mali and Nigeria as case study countries, this study shows that climate change may reduce the yield of staple food crops -namely maize, rice, and millet -by 20% in 2050 compared to their levels in 2000. Sustainable land and water management (SLWM) -which includes a combination of organic soil fertility, inorganic fertilizer, and water managementswill more than offset the effect of climate change on yield under the current management practices. Additionally, SLWM is more profitable and could therefore increase household income and address poverty.Unfortunately, adoption rates of SLWM remain low. Policies and strategies for increasing their adoption includes improvement of market access, enhancing the capacity of agricultural extension service providers to provide advisory services on SLWM, and building an effective carbon market that involves both domestic and international buyers. The recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) provides one of the opportunities for reducing climate risks and achieving sustainable agricultural production under climate change.