Up to 5,000ha of degraded land will be restored by the Malawi Green Corps, including through clean-up of illegal dump sites containing non-hazardous waste. Recyclable materials will be diverted from the waste stream for repurposing, recycling and/or sale, providing further job and income generation opportunities. Afforestation and reforestation of degraded sites will focus on vulnerable watersheds and maximize use of fast-growing indigenous species of trees, shrubs and grasses suitable to the sites, with linkages to ongoing integrated watershed management and land restoration initiatives being delivered through government and development partners, including ecosystem-based adaptation initiatives financed through the GEF. For example, Green Corps members may work in similar locations to participants in the national social protection programme to ensure that restoration efforts are complementary, and may link to lake and river basin interventions under the existing Transformational Action for Resilience in Malawi (TRANSFORM) initiative.
Recruitment and Mobilization of Green Corps Cohorts
Recruitment of youth prioritizes localizing economic benefits to host communities and districts, with preference to engaging workers living adjacent hotspot areas. Leveraging UNDP’s partnership with Malawi’s National Registration Bureau (NRB), biometric national ID cards will be used by the service provider to validate personnel and ensure transparency of labour inputs and remuneration. Recruitment guidelines will be finalized by the service provider in consultation with UNDP and GoM, incorporating gender, disability and income-poverty considerations. Consistent application of health and safety protocols, including those for COVID-19 as well as protection safeguards for vulnerable people, will be adhered to by all partners. The service providers must include personnel protective equipment (PPEs) as part of its procurement plan.
UNDP signed partnership agreements with the Government of Malawi and the selected service provider to deliver core objectives, including: identifying and rehabilitating environmental hotspots aligned with national watershed, forest, and landscape restoration priorities; confirming roles and responsibilities for district and community engagement; establishing a salary accountability and tracking system (linked to national ID); designing and sharing an online mentor and peer platform (co-supported by the UNDP Acceleration Lab); and an M&E framework for measurement.
Local capacity building for implementing and upscaling the solution
In-field capacity building in animal tracking in Uganda
Jan Zwilling
In-field capacity building in animal collaring and tracking in Uganda
Jan Zwilling
Capacity building in vulture capturing and tagging with park staff in Uganda
Jan Zwilling
The GAIA Initiative conducts important capacity building measures as the developed early-warning system is put into practice together with local parks and authorities in many African countries such as Namibia, Mozambique and Uganda. Park staff, officers in relevant authorities and in ministries are trained while implementing the system. This includes empowering local communities to conduct collaring, tagging, and tracking with the GAIA system as well as implementing the early-warning pipeline using the designated frontend.
Additionally, GAIA staff is actively educating students in various disciplines and research fields to support novel technologies for conservation and life scienes. In the past 6 years more than 250 students successfully partipated in courses conducted by GAIA staff at the University of Namibia in veterinary science and wildlife biology with special focus on, for example, human-wildlife conflict, animal tracking as well as vulture, lion and hyena behaviour.
Both professional capacity building and student training directly targets local communities to enable them to run the GAIA early-warning system largely with local knowledge and resources alone. This building block puts the GBF target 20 "Strengthen Capacity Building, Technology Transfer, and Scientific and Technical Cooperation for Biodiversity" at the core of the GAIA Initiative as this block is not an addendum to the research and development part of the Inititiative, but a key field of action from the very beginning.
Capacity building and university training rely on long-term relationships and embeddedness of the GAIA staff in the respective local communities and organisations. Especially in Namibia, there has been a 25-year track record of collaborating with the relevant bodies that GAIA is now able to utilize for capacity building and education. Furthermore, an investment in technology transfer and support is needed to enable local partners to adopt and implement the system.
Effective implementation of a novel approach is a challenging task, especially on the long run. GAIA integrated the implementation perspective from the very beginning, but still needed to put more emphasis in establishing routines, processes and responsibilities together with the authorities involved. Under the GAIA umbrella, the scientist started a designated three-year project funded by the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection. This project will push local capacity building and implementation and secure a sustainable roll-out .
