Land Management

The careful management of land and its natural resources is at the centre of policies of good rural governance.  Such policies having either been entirely lacking, or not having been enforced in the past, many countries face serious problems of land degradation, soil erosion and loss of soil fertility.  Careful work in recent decades has demonstrated that this need not be a terminal condition.

EDG has contributed considerably to the process of bringing large proportions of national land under regimes of sustainable land management planning, notably through the preparation of management plans for protected areas and programmes for the neighbouring countryside. One example is our work producing management plans for three of the largest of such areas in the Kalahari desert, in Botswana.  We have done similar work in Karamoja, in north-east Uganda, and are at present closely involved in the preparation of plans to assist the wise use of land - for people, their livestock and wildlife - in northern Mali.