World Environment Day is an opportunity to highlight the need for collective climate action to protect and restore our planet.
Held on June 5th each year, the theme for World Environment Day 2024 is ‘Our Land. Our Future’. The focus is on land restoration, drought and desertification.
World Environment Day is a reminder that climate change and its impacts continue to affect us all. We must continue to find sustainable ways to live, work and adapt in order to reduce biodiversity loss, pollution and protect our planet for future generations.
In Africa 65% of land is affected by degradation – meaning it has lost some of its natural productivity. However, these lands still have environmental and economic value. Reviving and restoring these ecosystems is crucial in the battle against climate change. The UN warned that we must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and climate.
At Self Help Africa we’re committed to the objectives of World Environment Day, with regenerative agriculture, climate smart farming practices and reforestation efforts at the core of our work with small-scale farming communities in Africa.
Self Help Africa is part of the world’s biggest community-led land restoration project, the Global EverGreening Alliance’s Restore Africa initiative, which launched in Kenya last year. The initiative will restore 1.9 million hectares of land, and directly support 1.5 million smallholder farming families across six countries in Africa – Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
We are also supporting efforts to protect and enhance the resilience of mangroves to climate change in Diegoune, Senegal. These vitally important ecosystem and can sequester up to four times more carbon than a rainforest, help improve soil and reduce erosion.To find out more about our work in response to the climate challenges faced in sub-Saharan Africa visit here.