Gash Sustainable Livelihoods Regeneration Project

The project area is the Gash Delta in the eastern part of the Sudan, where there has been civil unrest. With its important water resources, the area has drawn large numbers of poor people displaced by the civil war and by drought, placing immense pressure on the resource base. As the population has increased drastically in this region in recent decades, the total area of cultivated land has decreased and livelihoods have suffered. The project promotes equitable and sustainable use of land and water resources.
The overall goal is to regenerate the livelihoods of poor people in the area and secure their access to irrigated land and water supplies. Specific objectives of the project are to:

1. rehabilitate the flood irrigation scheme to increase availability of cultivable land
2. improve forestry production and livestock productivity
3. refurbish existing water facilities to increase access of local communities to safe water
4. improve outreach of rural financial services to small tenant farmers and herders, landless people and women
5. help institutions support improved management of local resources

The project has already begun the process of guiding reforms to land and water governance and has helped mobilize institutional structures that will enable farmers to manage these resources.

Source: IFAD