International Workshop, Nairobi, Kenya – August 2018 | Umweltbundesamt

The international workshop “Implementing Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) in Africa: Means, legal instruments and institutional challenges?“ was held on 14/15 August 2018 in the Hotel Windsor in Nairobi, Kenya and was co-organized by the German Environment Agency (Dr. Harald Ginzky), the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation – Climate Policy and Energy Security Program for Sub-Saharan Africa (CLESAP) (Prof. Oliver Ruppel), der Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (Walter Engelberg) and the University of Nairobi (Dr. Robert Kibugi). The workshop addressed the two core questions:

• What shortcomings and deficiencies do exist with regard to legislation, organizational and institutional aspects as well as capacity building and awareness raising and how could these be overcome?
• How could international fora (e.g. UNCCD, FAO, ⁠UNEP⁠, African Union) support each African state to surmount these deficiencies?

The workshop program may be uploaded here. 

Sustainable soil management is a precondition for sustainable development in Africa and worldwide as the degradation of soils is a cause for hunger, migration and even wars. Although land degradation is a global challenge, solutions and appropriate approaches must be developed and implemented on local level. This requires an interdisciplinary cooperation taking into account scientific, social, cultural, political, financial as well as legal aspects.

These are the most important results:

• Soil in its capacity as a natural resource is not yet integrated in African legislation.
• Generally, there is no dedicated, comprehensive and coherent soil policy which could inform law. No comprehensive soil protection law has been enacted. Soil relevant provisions are very much fragmented.
• The land ownership concept in most African states poses a significant barrier to sustainable soil management as land ownership is perceived as an absolute right of use (and misuse) of the respective plot of land. Soil related provisions are thus not effectively implemented and enforced.

Nairobi Outcome Document shows all further results of the workshop.

The participants stressed the necessity of effective soil protection in Africa. The exchange of views should be prolonged by future activities such as cooperation, interdisciplinary workshops and awareness raising measures.

The presentations are intended to be published as scientific papers in Volume 4 of the „International Yearbook of Soil Law and Policy “. Moreover, a model legislation on sustainable soil management was seen as an important tool to achieve improved soil protection in Africa.
The workshop has set important stimulus for more soil protection in Africa and has thus to be valued as a major success.