INTERFACES – Supporting Pathways to Sustainable Land Management in Africa
Table of Contents
Summary
Land management and the securing, use, control and governance of land-related natural resources is one of the key drivers for sustainable development in Africa. Sustainable land management should contribute to food security, adaptation of agriculture and forestry to climate change, nature and environmental protection, and be organized in a way that contributes to social justice. Since October 2022, the German Research Ministry (BMBF) is supporting four regional research and development (R&D) projects that will contribute to this aim.
INTERFACES is a support project that will support the BMBF-funded regional projects in their endeavor to drive change for sustainable land management in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will do so through impact-driven support activities which build on networking for the regional projects, science communication, social learning processes and capacity development, and by complementary transfer analyses that enable or facilitate the implementation as well as improve the relevance and outreach of the regional projects' research-based findings.
To achieve changes towards sustainable land management, a fundamental reorganization is needed across technological, economic, political, institutional and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values. Changes must be gender-responsive and socially inclusive, which means that implementation pathways for sustainable land management must be based on thorough gender and power analyses and lead to outcomes that benefit both women and men of different ethnicities, ages, classes, and income levels.
Therefore, INTERFACES has four work areas that together strengthen the integration, coherence and reach of the regional projects with regard to sustainable land management: 1. Knowledge synthesis through dialogues about future visions and theories of change for sustainable land management - together with the regional projects and actors from science, policy and practice, 2. Support of innovation and implementation processes by identifying change strategies to bridge knowledge-behaviour gaps, 3. Communication, networking and knowledge management and 4. Education, e.g. through the integration of teaching content into African and German graduate programs. The methods and results of the regional projects find their way into the training of project partners and students with regard to the training of future “change agents”.
The outputs from INTERFACES are expected to include scientific and non-scientific publications, the promotion of transdisciplinary research and social learning approaches in order to produce research results that are relevant to practice, the strengthening of already existing networks on land management issues and linking them up with different African networks to further contribute to the implementation of the R&D results in the area of land management. Finally, INTERFACES will anchor implementation-oriented research in education and training.
Coordinator
Dr. Tina Beuchelt
Centre for Development Research (ZEF)
Genscherallee 3
53121 Bonn
Duration
01.10.2022 – 30.09.2026