Monitoring forest and landscape restoration for sustainable land management and improving livelihoods
Rwanda committed to restore two million hectares of deforested and degraded land by 2020 as a pledge to the Bonn Challenge and to contribute to AFR100 (African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative), a pan-African, country-led effort to restore 100 million hectares (386 thousand square miles) of degraded and deforested landscapes by 2030.
These commitments demonstrate Rwanda’s recognition of the importance of its natural resources and its determination to restore productive landscapes in order to support the socioeconomic development of the country.
The government and its stakeholders have collaborated to come up with projects and initiatives to revive the forest cover that was lost several years ago due to poor forest management and damaging land use practices, as well as to improve the ecological and economic productivity of degraded land. Rwanda’s dense and rapidly increasing population on a fragile land resource, as well as climatic conditions, have caused significant forest, soil and water degradation, thereby reducing the productivity of the land. According to the fourth Population and Housing Census (NISR, 2012), Eighty-five per cent of the population still made a living from subsistence farming on degraded lands; restoring their fertility is therefore crucial.
FAO is among the partners committed to support the government achieve its restoration goals. Through the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism, FAO facilitates integrated land use planning and implementation of sustainable agriculture and restoration of degraded landscapes.
Regular monitoring of restoration interventions is critical to assess the effectiveness of the interventions and inform decision-making. In a bid to develop the capacity of communities and technical staff at sector and district level to monitor progress made in restoration, FAO introduced Collect Earth, a free and open source software for land monitoring developed by the FAO with the expertise of Google Earth and Earth Engine.
Analyzing and interpreting satellite image
FAO organized a week-long intensive data-collection event, mapathon, for various participants from Rulindo District, including the Vice-Mayor, the directors of Once Stop Center and of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the district, agronomists and several enterprises active in the sector of agri-food in the district of Rulindo. During this mapathon, all participants were trained by FAO to visually interpret satellite images through Collect Earth. The participants then used this tool, in combination with their familiarity of the landscape, to assess the status and trends of land and forest degradation in Rulindo.
The purpose of the mapathon is to produce a baseline scenario of tree cover and land uses in Rulindo in order to help monitor the effect of restoration interventions through time and to inform and guide current and future land use masterplan in the district of Rulindo.
Félicien Niyoniringiye is the director of the One Stop Centre (OSC) that oversees land management and administration, infrastructure, energy, water, electricity and housing in Rulindo District. He took part in the data collection exercise using Collect Earth tool.
“We have been looking at the photos without making in-depth assessment. The tool will help us to monitor land use masterplan. We have land designated for forest planting and other activities, with this tool I will be able to monitor how this plan is implemented from my office. We used to go to the field and observe and fill the papers manually,” says Félicien.
“The tool is crucial because it will help us to monitor the sustainability of our activities in forest and landscape restoration. We have been sending enumerators who collect data by interviewing the farmers and fill the papers manually. It has been time consuming and expensive because we have to hire enumerators,” says Angelique, LWH Team Leader