Using trees to adapt to a prolonged winter and dry season

GIZ
Published: 04 April 2017
Last edited: 21 February 2023
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Summary

The project promoted the planting of drought-resistant olive trees. The sale of fruit generates income, thereby increasing the resilience of the local communities. The project provided planting material to, organized training on grafting and budding, and arranged an exposure visit for farmers. Furthermore, the project promoted the use of formerly unutilized mulberry fruit as livestock feed. Through training and practical demonstration farmers learned how to produce mulberry based feed-blocks.

Classifications

Region
South Asia
Scale of implementation
Local
Ecosystem
Agro-ecosystem
Forest ecosystems
Orchard
Temperate evergreen forest
Theme
Adaptation
Agriculture
Ecosystem services
Outreach & communications
Restoration
Sustainable livelihoods
Watershed management
Challenges
Drought
Floods
Increasing temperatures
Land and Forest degradation
Loss of Biodiversity
Shift of seasons
Unsustainable harvesting incl. Overfishing
Lack of public and decision maker’s awareness
Poor monitoring and enforcement
Lack of food security
Sustainable development goals
SDG 1 – No poverty
SDG 2 – Zero hunger
SDG 13 – Climate action
Aichi targets
Target 1: Awareness of biodiversity increased
Target 7: Sustainable agriculture, aquaculture and forestry
Target 10: Ecosystems vulnerable to climate change
Target 14: Ecosystem services
Target 15: Ecosystem restoration and resilience
Target 17: Biodiversity strategies and action plans
Target 19: Sharing information and knowledge
Target 20: Mobilizing resources from all sources
Sendai Framework
Target 2: Reduce the number of affected people globally by 2030

Location

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province, Pakistan | Swāt District, Chitrāl District

Challenges

In Chitral and Swat districts, climate change adversely affects the livelihoods of the local communities which mainly depend on the services and benefits that the ecosystems provide. With advancing climate change, drought periods will be longer and more frequent. Biodiversity is slowly eroding. In agriculture, local well adapted and resilient species and varieties are disappearing, inter alia due to lack of awareness, propagation of high-yielding varieties, overexploitation of forests and rangelands. There is an acute shortage of fodder for livestock, a situation that is worsened by a prolonged winter / dry season. In the past, the relevant government services have worked in an un-coordinated way, with insufficient communication within and among the departments, and planned their field activities in a top-down manner. Farmers were insufficiently supported in their efforts to adapt to climate change, and to conserve and sustainably manage biodiversity as a basis for their livelihoods.

Beneficiaries

Mulberry planting: 100 male and 50 female farmers Olive plantation: 20 farmers Vulnerability assessment process: 292 farmers and government staff

How do the building blocks interact?

The systematization of best practices of similar projects (Building Block 1) and vulnerability assessments for integrated bottom-up planning (Building Block 2) laid the foundation for subsequent project implementation. The planned EbA measures were implemented in a participatory manner through a community-based approach (Building Block 3). While using biodiversity and ecosystem services for climate change adaptation of local communities it was of particular importance that the selected EbA measures are climate smart and make use of resilient tree species (Building Block 4).

Impacts

• The local community in Chitral has learned how to prepare Mulberry fruit based feed-block and knows its nutritional and economic value. The local community is able to use mulberry when fodder availability is lean. • The production of mulberry fruit based feed-blocks is being replicated by some farmers, and some of them have started marketing the feed-blocks in the area. • 3000 high-quality olive tree seedlings have been planted by farmers in Swat. The plantation sites are protected from grazing animals which has increased vegetation cover and has restored the habitat for the local fauna • The participation in the vulnerability assessments and the subsequent joint planning and implementation of adaptation measures increased the awareness of different stakeholders around biodiversity in general and, more specifically, around the interrelatedness of biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate change.

Contributed by

asghar.khan_26129's picture

Asghar Khan Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH

Other contributors

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH