Enviro News Asia, Ulaanbaatar — Two free online courses launched during the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) are providing practitioners and decision-makers with practical skills to support landscape restoration across Africa’s Great Green Wall region and beyond.
The courses, launched at the Great Green Wall Pavilion, focus on agroforestry implementation and evidence-based stakeholder engagement. The initiative aims to strengthen the knowledge and capacity needed to turn large-scale restoration commitments into practical action.
The Great Green Wall is an African-led initiative focused on restoring degraded drylands across the Sahel and neighboring regions while improving livelihoods and strengthening resilience to climate change and drought.
Landscape restoration at this scale requires not only ambitious targets and financial support but also technical expertise and the ability to work effectively with local communities and other stakeholders.
The first course, “Agroforestry for Implementers in the Great Green Wall Region,” provides practical guidance on implementing agroforestry systems. It is designed for extension workers, NGO and project staff, trainers, teachers, students and researchers working in agroforestry.
Available in English and French, the course covers local condition assessments, community engagement, tree and practice selection, and the establishment and management of agroforestry systems. It emphasizes approaches adapted to local landscapes rather than treating tree planting as a universal solution.
The second course, “Stakeholder Engagement with Evidence,” introduces the SHARED approach, or Stakeholder Approach to Risk Informed and Evidence Based Decision Making, developed by Landscape Alliance.
The self-paced course is available in English and French and is intended for practitioners, policymakers, researchers and community leaders. It combines stakeholder engagement, systems thinking and evidence to support more collaborative and informed decisions on landscape restoration.
Landscape Alliance said strengthening these skills is important because restoration initiatives can face challenges when technical interventions fail to reflect local conditions or when scientific evidence does not translate into decisions trusted by communities and other stakeholders.
“Achieving the restoration goals of the Great Green Wall calls for equipping the people who are leading and implementing that restoration with the knowledge, practical skills and tools they need to succeed,” said Ibrahim Touré, K4GGWA Programme Co-lead at Landscape Alliance.
Toon de Bruyn, Global Learning Strategist at Landscape Alliance, said restoration projects can face two major gaps: technical approaches that do not fit local conditions and scientific evidence that fails to translate into trusted decisions.
The courses are available through the Landscape Academy, a free e-learning platform delivered by Landscape Alliance and the Global Landscapes Forum through the Knowledge for the Great Green Wall Action (K4GGWA) programme, which is funded by the European Union.
The launch took place under the COP17 theme, “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope.” It also supports the broader objectives of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030, which has placed ecosystem restoration at the center of global environmental action.
The initiative highlights the importance of investing not only in restoration policies and financing but also in the people, technical expertise and practical knowledge required to implement restoration efforts effectively on the ground. (*)
