Land degradation, associated conflicts, and climate change are global development challenges that particularly affect African countries. Progress in combating land degradation is lagging behind expectations. This calls for urgent responses and sustainable actions that go beyond business-as-usual practices.
Joint initiative for land, water, and human well-being
This Africa – Europe Cluster of Research Excellence (CoRE), launched by the African Research Universities Alliance ARUA and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, links key research partners in sustainable water and land resource management with partners from policy and practice. Together, these teams will address land degradation to foster sustainable development, conflict resolution, and human well-being.
Taking care of land, water – and, in particular, the long-term health of ecosystems and landscapes – is fundamental to ensuring food security, to building resilience to climate change and pandemics, and to supporting sustainable livelihoods.
Contributing to the Innovation Agenda of African and European Unions
The overarching goal is to establish a dynamic CoRE that contributes mainly to the African and European Unions Innovation Agenda priority area “Green Transition”, and partly to “Innovation and Technology” and “Capacities for Science”.
The CoRE will address the following questions in different socio-ecological contexts in Africa and Europe:
- Systemic understanding: What are the dynamics and interactions of systemic drivers of land degradation processes such as climate change, land use change, social conflicts, economic dynamics, and local and global policies?
- Governance and institutions: What land and water management and governance systems and value chains are most promising for addressing resource-based conflicts and for the adoption of inclusive and viable nature-based solutions for sustainable land and water management?
- Upscaling and outscaling: How can existing nature-based practices of water and land management be jointly appraised in learning spaces/learning watersheds with the stakeholders concerned (e.g. local communities, civil society organizations, policymakers, private sector) and if suitable, be brought to scale to restore areas affected by land and water degradation?
- Monitoring and learning: How can diverse sources of data and knowledge (e.g. traditional knowledge, remote sensing, socio-economic data) be integrated to develop effective methods to monitor land degradation dynamics and the multifaceted effects of land management interventions at different scales?
A new form of collaboration
Africa Europe CoREs are a new form of collaboration between some of the best researchers from both continents, striving for equitable partnerships in an unequal world. Their launch has been enabled to address UN Sustainable Development Goals through excellent research, education, capacity building, mobility and innovation. The CoREs were proposed by academics and selected according to the excellence of their 10-year collaborative plans which contribute to the four priority areas of the EU-AU Innovation Agenda.
Consortium
This CoRE consists of two lead universities – CDE, University of Bern and the Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia – four partner universities in South Africa, Kenya, Senegal, and Romania, as well as four additional partners.
