Kontext

Desertification, as defined by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), is the degradation of land in drylands caused by factors such as climate variations and human activities. In Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, about 25% of the land is highly or very highly vulnerable to degradation. This vulnerability is expected to worsen with future climate change and continued pressures from current land use practices.

Land degradation varies greatly depending on the specific context, so solutions to prevent and reverse it must consider local social, economic, environmental and political conditions. In a multi-actor stakeholder approach TERRASAFE will actively involve local communities of landowners and other stakeholders in decision-making processes on viable desertification prevention and restoration measures.  This approach will be co-created with five 'desertification innovation partnerships', in which project partners will closely collaborate with local communities to tailor the approach to local social-ecological circumstances. The five communities were selected for representing the main desertification types across Europe and Northern Africa.  

Objectives

The overall aim of TERRASAFE is to empower local communities in southern Europe and North Africa to tackle desertification. The primary goal of the project is to co-create, test and enable the adoption of innovations that both prevent desertification and/or restore degraded land. The project includes 5 pilot areas in Cyprus, Italy, Romania, Spain and Tunisia, each of which are highly vulnerable to desertification.

The key objectives are:

1. Develop and implement a multi-actor approach to seek sustainable ways of preventing and combatting desertification
2. Produce and adopt an integrated desertification assessment framework
3. Create and implement a harmonised framework to evaluate and demonstrate potential innovations that seek to prevent and combat desertification
4. Carry out policy analysis and produce policy recommendations that could help prevent and combat desertification at local, regional, national, European, and international levels
5. Co-develop and co-implement an integrated communication-dissemination-collaboration strategy to raise awareness about preventing and combatting desertification

Activities

TERRASAFE will work with 5 Desertification Innovation Partnerships in five pilot areas. These partnerships will:

1. Define their visions on building desertification resilience and plan their ensuing project work
2. Map and analyse past and ongoing desertification, identifying hotspots
3. Evaluate and demonstrate innovations at these hotspots, comparing them with traditional/organic practices
4. Develop policy recommendations for the wider uptake of the TERRASAFE-certified innovations, both within and beyond the pilot areas, taking into account lessons learnt from past and ongoing policies against desertification;
5. Share their TERRSAFE’s experience with other areas, other desertification-prone communities and the general public.

TERRASAFE plans to use a co-design approach in each pilot area to test up to five of the following innovations for combatting desertification: