Africa is rich in critical ecosystems that serve as buffers to climate change – tropical forests, wetlands, deserts, savanna, etc.
However, the region is experiencing a dramatic loss of biodiversity due to the overexploitation of landscapes, oceans, and wildlife.
To revive Africa’s degrading ecosystem, a nature-based solution like ecosystem restoration is crucial especially if the continent seeks to end poverty while combating climate change.
Ecosystem restoration is one of the most important ways of delivering nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as biodiversity loss. This is because it reverses the degradation of ecosystems and improves their productivity and capacity to meet the needs of society.
Since Africa and its economy is reliant on agriculture and landscapes have proven to be great climate change combatants, assisted natural regeneration – which favors growth from existing tree stumps through their management and protection – has often been used by farmers to foster tree development.
Assisted natural regeneration is a simple, cost-efficient approach that has proven successful in restoring vast areas as it rehabilitates degraded forest lands by taking advantage of trees already growing in the area.
However, assisted natural regeneration alone may not be sufficient to sustain tree cover recovery as it doesn’t work for every landscape.
While it works best in areas that are not highly degraded but are surrounded by forest remnants and where seeds are living in the soil, tree planting is a better option in areas where intensive farming and overgrazing have not heavily degraded or compacted the soil.
Tree planting also comes in handy in cases when natural regeneration on its own does not increase tree cover quickly enough or the targeted species fail to grow on their own.
No doubt, assisted natural regeneration is an essential part of the solution to tackle climate change and biodiversity collapse but tree planting should be employed to ensure reforestation on a timely and larger scale, especially as Africa races against time to beat the climate crisis, and eradicate hunger and poverty.
