Eland reintroduction. Photo credit: Peace Parks Foundation
Through reinstalling natural processes, such on water, rewilding helps to reduce the risks of desertification.
How can rewilding help reduce desertification and its effects? This was the question set by the UN University in Bonn, Germany, in its assessment of seven ‘new’ land and water management approaches, of which rewilding was one. That the Global Rewilding Alliance took part in the process is a clear indication that rewilding as a relatively new perspective for the future management of land and water is receiving increasing attention outside the narrower conservation and wildlife community. This is indeed encouraging, and serves as an example of how the GRA is working towards fulfilling its mission: to mainstream rewilding in science, policy, and practice by 2030.
African buffalo herd from ‘Herding 4 Health’. Photo credit: Peace Parks Foundation
What links rewilding and desertification?
What does rewilding have to do with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)? Well, rewilding is about land use, mobilising the power of nature “to lead” in a human context, helping to combat desertification and mitigate its effects.
The UNCCD was established in 1994 to protect and restore our land and ensure a just, safer, and more sustainable future. The Convention – based on the principles of participation, partnership, and decentralisation – is a multilateral commitment amongst 196 country Parties and the European Union to mitigate the impact of land degradation, and protect our land so we can provide food, water, shelter, and economic opportunity to all people.
In spring 2023, the Global Rewilding Alliance was invited by the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (EHS) to take part in a process to assess how seven different ‘new’ land and water management approaches – among them rewilding – could enhance the work of the UNCCD, with a focus on their contribution to ecosystem health, food security, human well-being, and a set of socio-economic criteria.
Regarding rewilding we didn’t travel alone. From the GRA Secretariat, we contacted our network in Africa, Asia, Australia and the Middle East to solicit input from the field, which generated four names of people who expressed interest to participate. At the focal group discussions in May 2023, several people from the IUCN CEM Rewilding Thematic Group also took part. Following a focal group exercise, it was decided by the GRA Secretariat to also participate and support the analysis and compilation of the report.
Maasai community has set aside part of their land for rewilding. Photo credit: The Enonkishu Conservancy.
What are the conclusions?
Not surprisingly, rewilding’s biggest contribution is to the “ecosystem health pillar” of the Sustainable Land Management (SLM) concept through its goal to recover ecological processes and establish self-maintaining natural ecosystems. The overall objective of SLM is “to promote human coexistence with nature with a long-term perspective so that the provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services of ecosystems are ensured”.
Rewilding significantly contributes to global ecosystem services, such as water management, climate change mitigation & adaptation, reducing impacts of wildfires & invasive alien species, biodiversity, of course(!), and others.
Food security is not a goal of rewilding per se, but if rewilding and agriculture production are integrated at a landscape level, food production could be enhanced. An interesting case study by The Nature Conservancy from an arid area in California – Rewilding Agricultural Landscapes: A California Study in Rebalancing the Needs of People and Nature – illustrates this. It was concluded that rewilding the least productive of these cultivated landscapes offers a sensible way to reverse the damage from intensive agriculture. These ecological restoration efforts can recover natural diversity, resilience and enhance the water balance, improving the situation for the farms and the communities they support.
Although the academic literature (often UK-biased) have reported on “unclear” links between rewilding and human well-being and that rewilding often even “neglect land property and land user rights and cause land-holder displacement”, the GRA network provides many good examples of the contrary – how people can live and thrive in the company of rewilding efforts. Indeed, most rewilding efforts have learnt from the mistakes of past conservation efforts and included local communities in shaping and governing rewilding efforts from the outset.
A village resident in Chandrapur District using the sustainable, biomass-fuelled water heater. Photo Credit: Dr. Anish Andheria, Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Rewilding on the ground: relevant examples
Here are some selected examples from the GRA network portfolio with a land use perspective, which were referred to as part of the UNU-EHS process:
- Enonkishu Conservancy, Kenya: As a win-win-win for people, cattle and wildlife, the Maasai community has set aside part of their land for rewilding in parallel to introducing sustainable rangeland management and implementing a tourism model where all guests are a part of the rewilding journey.
- Peace Parks Foundation’s holistic “Herding 4 Health” initiative is a community-driven livestock management model that supports the livelihoods of rural communities living in and around protected areas — while restoring rangelands and conserving biodiversity through herding, capacity building and collective governance.
- Wildlife Conservation Trust’s flagship ‘Heater of Hope’ project involves the deployment of an energy-efficient, biomass-fuelled water heater in thousands of households situated within the tiger corridor to the east of Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, to reduce human-wildlife conflict. The water heater is reducing the collection and use of firewood, thereby arresting forest degradation, the drudgery for the women who carry firewood from the forest by headloads, and their exposure to harmful smoke from the traditional wood-fired stove. Now in 9,500 homes, the water heater is leading to firewood savings of at least 9,500 tonnes and a CO2 emission reduction of 15,200 tonnes annually. In 2023, WCT received the UNDP Mahatma Award for Biodiversity for the project.
- Conservation Global is a recent initiative in Africa aiming at supporting the establishment of community-initiated conservancies adjacent to national parks and other protected areas. Through effective Community-based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) initiatives, Conservation Global is empowering local communities to become stewards of their natural resources, balancing conservation with human well-being. Managing and rebuilding wildlife populations are key components. Activities are underway in Zambia, Namibia, Mozambique, Kenya, and Cameroon.
If you’re interested to learn more, the UNCCD-initiated assessment is described in a policy report, by a paper in Frontiers in Sustainable Resource Management, and an article in the IISD SDG Knowledge Hub. One of the conclusions of the IISD paper was that “integrating regenerative agriculture practices and rewilding can help restore natural ecological processes while promoting agriculture-based livelihoods and food security”.