Land Rehabilitation

The land management component of the EU Programme seeks to harmonise land management in the CORB. In order to rationalize on the diverse expectations and streamline actions in this activity, also recognizing the interest levels across other OKACOM partners, a workshop was held in October 2019 at the OKASEC offices, involving selected theme specialists and OKACOM project staff. The aim was to bring together various schools of technical/scientific thought and harness the rationales that exist among the team in order to establish the best possible interventions for the Land Management Thematic Area. Some of the key discussion points that relate to the implementation of land rehabilitation demonstration sites in the CORB included:

• Defining what OKACOM is aiming to achieve by implementing land rehabilitation interventions;
• Set clear and measurable restoration goals and targets that result in multiple social, ecological and economic benefits;
• Define how and where the demonstration projects that are to be funded within the ambit of the EU Programme is going to be implemented from the time of the workshop until October 2021;
• Define the scope of the land rehabilitation interventions and identify the specific no-regret activities that will be undertaken in this result area and deliver the required benefits;
• Identify those land rehabilitation and demonstration sites that afford the potential to maximise the impact of the available funds for the benefit of communities within the basin and to enhance the rehabilitation of degraded environments; and
• Develop a roadmap for the design and implementation of the land rehabilitation and demonstration activities.

A site selection criteria and methodology was deliberated on and key sites identified to demonstrate land management and rehabilitation efforts using best practices (as covered in the summary document)