The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) entered into a N$150 million project agreement with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) aimed at promoting a landscape management approach towards eradicating poverty for 20 000 people. Speaking at the document signing ceremony on Wednesday, UNDP Resident Representative Alka Bhatia emphasised that the Namibia Integrated Landscape Approach for Enhancing Livelihoods and Environmental Governance to Eradicate Poverty (NILALEG) will take a sustainability approach to protect and restore forests as carbon sinks. The five-year project will further promote land degradation neutrality by empowering farmers and the local communities to plan and manage agricultural lands, rangelands and forest resources on a sustainable basis. It will also generate livelihoods in a manner that promotes conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, sustainable land, forest management and climate change mitigation. “This project contributes directly to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15: life on land, which targets taking urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halve the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species,” said Bhatia. The project will be implemented in the Kavango East, Zambezi, Kunene and Omusati regions. At the same event, MET Executive Director Teofilus Nghitila noted that the improvement of the livelihoods of the communities will be achieved through support to the restoration of degraded land, agroforestry and sustainable crop along with rangeland management. The communities will further benefit through nature-based enterprise development through tourism and value addition and processing of natural products. “Over 20 000 people will benefit from this project and we want to reduce poverty through increasing the income of our rural people in a sustainable manner,” Nghitila added. The project will start in September 2019 and will end in June 2025.