Impact Evaluation of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) in Tunisia

In Tunisia, the land and water conservation has been the focus of national policies for almost 30 years, for the country represents a high rate of soil erosion, affecting 50% of its total surface. With a climatic variety going from arid – approximately 77% of the whole area – to semi-arid, the degradation of land and water resources remains sturdy challenge. Multiple national strategies have been implemented since 1990, with the support of laws enforcement to decrease this threat, and a special unit (DG-ACTA) has been created in 2001 to support the Ministry of Agriculture. The overall measures taken led to an increase of SLM practices in the Tunisian landscape for better performing grounds. 

The key elements triggering a successful land recovery are still under study and, since the process is very slow, the return on investment is at first glance not appealing. Therefore, the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative was launched to sustain and advocate SLM practices as an integral part of decision making and policy strategies, by highlighting the opportunities and benefits of such investment. The turning point may be reached thanks to the ICARDA project “Impact Evaluation of SLM Options to Achieve Land Degradation Neutrality”, funded by GIZ and sustained by the CGIAR Research Programs on Dryland Systems and Water, Land and Ecosystems. The goal is to provide a reliable Impact Evaluation tool for SLM practices, that would predict agronomic and economic outcomes of SLM interventions.

SLM Options by Context (OxC) is an online geographic information system, that continuously monitor impact on target areas through local assessments made with remote sensing technology. Based on the options by context approach, the tool will provide support to private and public stakeholders, answering common questions on land use and its management at different scale. These questions include:

 

How to target more relevant geographies and prioritize investments, given limited resources?

 

How to identify geographical domains that capture key biophysical, economic, and social drivers of land restoration and related outcomes?

 

How to anticipate future impacts of SLM in terms of land ecosystem services and benefited population?

The project started in August 2016 by collecting global and country-specific datasets, assessing and enlarging the knowledge base of SLM projects in Tunisia, and a standardized SLM options-by-context (SLM OxC) template has already been finalized. It facilitates SLM researchers, project managers and on-ground practisers to document SLM technological, environmental, economic and social aspects in their context. Later in 2017, the site-specific SLM OxC data in Tunisia will be stored in a national database and analysed to estimate the efficacy of SLM practices over time. The SLM OxC data will be also used to power another tool, the user-friendly Global Geoinformatics Context and Options (GeoCOs), that will enable stakeholders to investigate the efficacy of several SLM practices within different contexts simultaneously.

All the SLM and Web GIS competences will be conveyed to future NARS implementers in Tunisia later this year, within planned trainings and technical transferral workshops.

Don’t miss the 2017 Impact Evaluation Highlights!