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Resilience comes in many forms, and in a region confronting multiple environmental, social, and economic challenges, those challenges are interlinked. So are the solutions.
Resilience comes in many forms, and in a region confronting multiple environmental, social, and economic challenges, those challenges are interlinked. So are the solutions.
WFP’s Integrated Resilience Programme builds resilience through integrated strategies that simultaneously address food insecurity, environmental degradation, climate change, socioeconomic inequities, and geopolitical concerns.
This programme is designed to support and leverage the resourceful nature of the people of Sahel by providing the planning, resources, and training not only to alleviate current challenges but to help create resilient pathways forward that allow communities to absorb future shocks, adapt to a changing climate, and transform lives and ecosystems for the better.
As part of this multinational initiative, the Tandou Valley Development Project in Chad addresses the immediate and long-term food security needs of approximately 8,000 individuals, representing the 1,500 families who live within an 850 hectare area known as the Tandou Valley (alt. “Tondou”). This community project utilizes the proven interventions and asset development strategies employed across five countries through WFP’s Integrated Resilience in the Sahel Programme.
Sahel
The Sahel is a wide biogeographic belt in central Africa that spans 5,900 km (3,670 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Positioned between the arid Saharan desert and the humid savannahs to its south, this semi-arid region is home to a diverse array of cultures built around highly varied and often fragile ecosystems.
Adaptation is perhaps the most common trait among these peoples, some of whom are sedentary farmers while others continue to live as nomadic pastoralists. Climate change, intensifying environmental degradation, socioeconomic shifts, and regional conflicts have all taken their toll on the diverse peoples and ecosystems of the Sahel, leading to WFP’s “Integrated Resilience in the Sahel Programme,” including the countries of Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali and Niger.
Chad
Home to 16 million inhabitants, the Republic of Chad is a landlocked nation featuring a desert zone in the north, the semi-arid belt of the Sahel in its center, and a more fertile savannah zone in the south. More than 200 different cultural and linguistic groups make up the nation’s population, including a number of recent refugee groups fleeing conflicts in their own countries. Income opportunities are limited throughout Chad, and the country’s primary revenue has recently shifted from cotton to petroleum.
Economic inequality and internal conflict add to the challenges posed by climate change and environmental degradation. The Government of Chad is WFP’s primary strategic partner in Tandou and the other WFP Integrated Resilience projects happening across the country. WFP-Chad has collaborated with 68 cooperating partners, 56 national NGO’s, and 12 international NGO’s in these projects.
Tandou Valley
Located in Abéché province, the village of Tandou (also known as “Tondou”) lies 15 kilometers south of Abéché in eastern Chad, the fourth largest and the hottest city in Chad. Situated near the border of Sudan, the Tandou Valley is part of the semi-arid Sahel region of Africa, a transition zone between the drier Sahara to the north and the more humid savannahs to the south. Although steeped in traditional ecological knowledge, the Tandou community faces unprecedented environmental shifts and geopolitical dynamics that require all of that accumulated wisdom, along with new community development strategies.
Some community members are internally-displaced due to food and economic insecurity, while refugees fleeing conflict in other regions add additional pressures. Family income usually comes from family members working in cities. The seasonal influx of nomadic herders requires established corridors and land use agreements to prevent disputes. Less competition for scarce resources helps minimize conflict and supports collaboration.
Improving Diets
Community-Based Participatory Planning (CBPP) is an ongoing process that constantly incorporates results and feedback into programming to ensure maximum positive impact. Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) addresses immediate food needs through cash, voucher or food transfers, while simultaneously building or rehabilitating assets that will improve long-term food security and resilience, such as half-moons, polders, stone bunds, small dams, and other water retention structures.
Cereals, vegetables, fruits, and livestock products such as milk, meat, butter, and cheese are central to the local diet. Soil health and water conservation play a critical role in producing all of these foods for household use and development of local markets. Proper food storage and handling enhances both food safety and market opportunities. Market development depends upon essential infrastructure and usually requires outside investment to bring those markets to fruition.
About
The Greening platform is produced by The Lexicon with support from the World Food Programme. The World Food Programme is scaling resilience in the Tandou Valley and other communities across the five countries in the Sahel. The Resilience Monitoring and Measurement framework shows positive outcomes in ecological restoration, food and nutrition security, economic empowerment, access to social services, reduction of daily hardships, and social cohesion.
Team
Lexicon of Impacts is based on the Ecological Benefits Framework (EBF). This new paradigm provides a foundational architecture to radically transform global carbon, biodiversity, and ecological benefits markets. Coordinating financial institutions, UN agencies, NGOs, companies, and catalytic capital will bring attention to—and help create—a shared pathway for accelerated solutions, providing economic support for the people and projects that need it most.
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