Stories

Biodiversity is the key to all the essential benefits we get from nature: from clean air to our ability to regulate the climate. At IFAD, we integrate protecting biodiversity into everything we do.

Healthy ecosystems are diverse ecosystems. And at IFAD, we believe that small-scale farmers are amongst the greatest stewards and beneficiaries of biodiversity.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s drylands – that is, the areas where more water is lost through evaporation than gained through rainfall – are facing widespread degradation. There are many factors causing this, but one of the most prominent is the use of agricultural practices that aren’t adapted to the land, such as overgrazing and intensive agriculture.

The Great Green Wall was envisioned as a line of trees stretching across Africa to protect against desertification. Today, it is a mosaic of farms, forests, and wilderness, where sustainable agriculture is the norm and rural-dwellers thrive.