Overview
The ACReSAL is a six-year World Bank assisted Project committed to landscapes restoration in Northern Nigeria. The region is characterized by high poverty rates, low literacy, an environment of fragility, conflict, and violence, degradation of natural resources, poor agricultural productivity, climate risks, desertification, poor penetration of modern technology, and weak institutional capacity.
Addressing these issues will require effort in multiple sectors. The Federal Ministry of Environment is the lead implementing Agency, in collaboration with the Federal Ministries of Water Resources, and Agriculture and Rural Development.
The ACReSAL project is a multi-sectoral and multi-institutional scheme, covering Environment, Agriculture and Water. It was designed by the Federal Government to combat desertification, restore degraded lands, and special ecosystems for agriculture and biodiversity conservation. It is also expected to tackle issues of water scarcity for Agricultural purposes and the negative impact of Climate Change on Agricultural productivity, as well as livelihood of rural farmers in the selected states of the country.
The Project Development Objective of the Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) is to increase the implementation of sustainable landscape management practices in targeted watersheds in northern
Nigeria and strengthen Nigeria’s long-term enabling environment for integrated climate-resilient landscape management.
ACReSAL, which is in line with President Muhammed Buhari‘s sustainable goal of restoring 4 million hectares of degraded agricultural land by 2030, has long term objective of increasing the adoption of Climate Resilient Landscape management practice for environmental sustainability and improved agricultural yield for rural farmers, especially women and youth groups. To that effect, a target of 1million hectares has been set for restoration at the end of the project in 2028.
The project will assist in minimizing the ugly incidences of herders-farmers conflicts, over grazing land, and water through community cohesion and peace building. ACReSAL interventions will improve land use planning and help a wide range of communities adapt to evolving dryland conditions with an end target of 3.4 million direct project beneficiaries
The concept of ACReSAL is to fund investments strategically in the area of ecosystem restoration, flood and sedimentations control, sand dunes stabilization, watershed infrastructure such as integrated dams/small-scale multipurpose reservoirs and irrigation.
The sustainability of these investments will be reinforced by strengthening institutions and information services across sectors and States, including support to improve governance, regulatory compliance, environmental monitoring, impact evaluation, watershed and land use planning, thus, strengthening Nigeria’s capacity to promote and implement climate- resilient projects.
ACReSAL IN NIGER STATE
Created 3rd February, 1976 from what Used to be called North-Western State during the regime of General Murtala Ramat Mohammed, Niger State actually began functioning from April 1st of that year. The State stated with eight Local Government Areas, but now has Twenty – five Local Government Areas.
As at 26th August 1991 (before the emergence of Borgu and Agwara LDAs) the state covered a Land area of 74,244 square kilo meters, which is 8% of the total land area of Nigeria. With the merger, the land mass is about 10% of the total land area that is about 85% of the arable land.
The State lies on the latitude 3-200 East and longitude 11-300 North. Kaduna State and FCT are her boarders to the North – East and South – East respectively; Zamfara State boarders the North, Kebbi State in the West, Kogi State in the South and Kwara State in the South West. The Republic of Benin Along Agwara Local Government Area boarders her North West.