Tagant

Gorgol

Nouakchott Sud

Guidimaka

Brakna

Tiris Zemmour

Trarza

Hodh ech Chargui

Inchiri

Adrar

Hodh el Gharbi

Nouakchott Ouest

Dakhlet Nouâdhibou

Assaba

Nouakchott Nord

Mauritania

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Northern Mauritania faces desertification due to climate change, accelerating sand dune encroachment into farmlands and settlements. Water sources are drying up, pressure is increasing on limited resources, critical infrastructure is inundated by sand, and entire villages have been displaced in some cases. Without urgent action, the Sahara Desert is projected to advance southwards into Mauritania’s most fertile Sahelian zones.

The project aims to enhance climate resilience among vulnerable communities and ecosystems in northern Mauritania by reducing the impacts of climate change-induced desertification in the Sahara-Sahel boundary, enhancing water and livelihood security, and promoting sustainable land use through ecosystem-based adaptation, dune fixation, water resource management, and diversified climate-resilient livelihoods. As approximately 50 per cent of the beneficiaries are women, the project ensures female representation and has income-generating activities that empower women.

Key activities include strengthening governance and coordination for climate adaptation; improving water access and management; supporting climate-resilient livelihoods by promoting climate-smart agriculture and alternative income-generating activities; facilitating community-led adaptation through a Small Grants Facility; and enhancing knowledge generation and dissemination.

The Mauritanian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development will lead implementation, ensuring alignment with national plans. The project also promotes Locally Led Climate Action by actively involving communities in decision-making and ensuring context-specific, sustainable climate resilience.

SURAGGWA’s objective is to enhance ecological and climate resilience across Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal, while substantially increasing carbon sequestration through landscape restoration.

The Sahelian countries within the Great Green Wall (GGW) region are among the poorest and most vulnerable to climate change. Their economies largely depend on agriculture, livestock, and forestry, with over 70 per cent of rural communities reliant on rainfed agriculture. Climate change further exacerbates ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and the vulnerability of agro-silvopastoral landscapes, threatening food security and the sustainability of local livelihoods.

The programme will restore degraded agro-silvo-pastoral landscapes to build climate resilience and mitigation capacities, develop climate-resilient, low-emission Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) value chains to enhance market access and financial inclusion for vulnerable communities, and strengthen GGW institutions to improve coordination, monitoring, resource mobilisation, and knowledge management

The programme supports the African Union-led Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative by enhancing ecological and climate resilience. It contributes to the GGW goals of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land, creating 10 million new jobs and sequestering 250 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 through large-scale land restoration efforts.

Local CSOs and CBOs in landscapes-seascapes around the world access grant financing and technical assistance, including capacity development and knowledge sharing to maintain and enhance their socio-ecological resilience, well-being and socio-economic conditions for global environmental benefits.

SGP-OP8 builds on 30 years of successful experience in empowering local CSOs and CBOs in community driven initiatives that have enhanced wellbeing, increased awareness and resilience, and generated global environmental benefits. With economic development pressures intensifying in the developing world and the associated rising inequalities, local communities, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged groups are becoming increasingly marginalized. The objective of Part 1 of SGP OP8 is to engage local CSOs/CBOs in landscape-seascape approaches across the 99 participating countries, providing them access to knowledge and information, capacitating them through learning-by-doing, skills development, and delivering technical and grant assistance for interventions that enhance socioeconomic conditions and generate global environmental benefits. In line with the GEF-8 SGP Implementation Arrangements Paper, core SGP resources are to be allocated equally among all eligible countries.

The proposed strategy, elaborated through four complementary outcomes, reflects the key features of GEF Small Grants Programme 2.0, including new approaches to support youth, women and Indigenous Peoples, linking up with complementary partnerships, cooperating with the two additional GEF agencies, and leveraging opportunities with other GEF programs. SGP-OP8 will facilitate opportunities for innovation and scaling up, catalyze multi-stakeholder alliances, and leverage dialogue platforms for greater impact.

An important comparative advantage of SGP is the focus on social inclusion and vulnerable groups, including women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, the elderly and youth. Expected results under OP8-Part 1 include 225,000 ha of land and ecosystems under restoration, 3,800,000 ha of landscapes under improved practices, 90,000 ha of marine protected areas under improved management, 270,000 ha of marine habitat under improved practices, and 500,000 direct beneficiaries, of whom 250,000 are women.

Geography

Mauritania

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