Greening for the greater good: Socio-economic impacts of land restoration in the Great Green Wall

Our study examines the mid-term socioeconomic impacts of landscape restoration in highly desertification-prone Northern Nigeria through the Action Against Desertification (AAD) program. AAD implemented large-scale restoration and livelihood development activities aimed at increasing household income generation from restoration efforts and fostering alternative agricultural activities in an improved ecosystem. Using a multi-method strategy, we assess the impacts of landscape restoration at the household level. We leverage pre-restoration remote-sensed data and machine learning algorithms to identify comparable land sites to the program's restoration areas. Comparison households are selected from communities bordering these sites, replicating the AAD's targeting process. Our impact evaluation strategy employs the doubly-robust inverse-probability weighting regression adjustment model. Key findings indicate that land restoration activities did not negatively impact participant households' food security levels, despite some communal land use restrictions. Moreover, there was a reduction in moderate food insecurity observed. Household livelihood strategies in restoration areas shifted towards more climate-resilient activities, with decreased reliance on crop sales and increased participation in sales of livestock by-products and high-value Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP). Compared to participants that were involved in the program at a later stage, early participants experienced larger impacts, further validating these findings. Our results highlight the role of participatory approaches to restoration, and the need for multi-scale approaches that include the identification of communities’ immediate needs but also, increase market access, to enhance the synergies of restoration’s biophysical and socioeconomic outcomes. Our analysis also offers an innovative approach for future ex-post evaluations of land restoration programs. The lack of evidence from rigorous methods is a recurrent issue in environmental interventions.