Gums for Adaptation and Mitigation in Sudan (GAMS): Enhancing adaptive capacity of local communities and restoring carbon sink potential of the Gum Arabic belt, expanding Africa’s Great Green Wall

Sudan is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and severe and increasing moisture stress. In the Kordofan States, where the project will be located, 98% of agriculture is rainfed and greatly exposed to weather and climate threats. Gum Arabic, harvested from Acacia trees, provides livelihood to smallholder farmers. Gum trees are usually grown together with annual food crops to increase crop yields by enhancing soil fertility, improving water infiltration and lowering evaporation by reducing wind speed. Climate change is impacting the yield of gum arabica in Sudan due to moisture stress as much as by 50 percent annually.

The objective is to enhance climate resilience of livelihoods and agro-sylvo-pastoral ecosystem services in Kordofan, Sudan, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land use by 9.23 million tonnes of CO2e. The restoration of agroforestry systems with gum arabic trees will protect the annual crops against increased moisture stress, improving the resilience of the livelihoods of poor smallholder farmers and by building the capacity of 500 smallholder gum arabic producer associations (GAPAs) to produce larger quantities of clean, dry gum, benefiting a total of 1.58 million people. The project will also facilitate contract farming arrangements with small scale farmers and will mobilize private sector financing for the GAPAs. The project will invest in livestock mobility and rangeland restoration of 275,000 hectares of land, which will improve the resilience of pastoralists to climate shocks and take pressure off the gum agroforestry systems, thereby reducing further land use emissions.