World Bank–Supported Project Increases Productivity and Reduces Conflicts in Sahel

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located in the heart of West Africa, Burkina Faso is endowed with natural habitats such as gallery forests, sacred forests, nature reserves, and wetlands. Particularly notable sites include the Pics de Sindou, the Karfiguela Waterfall, the Sacred Dafra Pond, and the Tengréla Lake. Many of these sites are threatened, in addition to species such as panthers, elephants, crocodiles, and pythons. Over the years, high pressure on the natural resource base and the environment caused rapid degradation. Deforestation alone claims an estimated 10,000 hectares per year.

A World Bank–funded project focusing on lowland areas in selected subwatersheds in Burkina Faso has demonstrated how communities can improve the productive capacity of rural resources. Through sustainable conservation of biological and agricultural diversity and rehabilitation of soil and water resources, the Burkinabe were able to simultaneously generate income and environmental benefits.

The Sahel Integrated Lowland Ecosystem Management (SILEM) Project pioneered the concept of biodiversity in production landscape. It created and catalyzed community dynamics for the sustainable management of natural resources at the microwatershed level by implementing incentives, creating an investment framework consistent with the country’s priorities,

and by rewarding, while continuing to strengthen, individual and collective know-how.

Around 160 villages benefited from investment funds to support various natural resource management activities that included soil and agriculture techniques, water conservation technologies, livestock and fishery management, reforestation and forest management techniques, and natural resource protection.

The SILEM Project developed a number of activities related to land planning, including 100 local conventions on natural resources; 3,837 hectares of improved land through stone bunds; 8,307 fosses fumières; the recuperation of 3,138 hectares of degraded land using the scarifiage, the zai technique, and demi-lunes; the treatment of 250 gullies for agropastoral production; and 26,500 meters of revitalized small dykes. Through the SILEM Project, 7,500 hectares of native forest were designated for conservation. Other key activities related to the restoration of forest cover and biodiversity included the production of 195,720 seedling plants, the use of 941,934 plants for reforestation, and the establishment of an 11 hectares of botanical conservatory.

Because the main constraint for livestock production is the poor organization of space, SILEM’s investment focused on the creation of 3,514 hectares of pasture zones, 417 kilometers of pasture ways, and 10 pastoral water points.

The key outputs in the promotion of plant production were the conversion and rehabilitation of 166 hectares of lowland areas (mainly for rice production) and the supply of 8,800 kilograms of improved cereal seeds to the beneficiaries of the converted or rehabilitated parcels of land.

Overall, 2,971 microprojects were implemented and 13,218 producers, local institutions, and extension agents were trained on sustainable land management practices. Through participative planning and open dialogue between villages, farmers and herders, the SILEM project fostered peace building and eliminated most conflicts.

Web site: www.worldbank.org