Gorgol

Tagant

Hodh ech Chargui

Nouakchott Ouest

Hodh el Gharbi

Brakna

Guidimaka

Adrar

Nouakchott Nord

Assaba

Tiris Zemmour

Trarza

Dakhlet Nouâdhibou

Nouakchott Sud

Inchiri

Mauritania

<p>Mauritania Nationally Determined Contribution. NDC3.0</p>

Northern Mauritania faces desertification due to climate change, accelerating sand dune encroachment into farmlands and settlements. Water sources are drying up, pressure is increasing on limited resources, critical infrastructure is inundated by sand, and entire villages have been displaced in some cases. Without urgent action, the Sahara Desert is projected to advance southwards into Mauritania’s most fertile Sahelian zones.

The project aims to enhance climate resilience among vulnerable communities and ecosystems in northern Mauritania by reducing the impacts of climate change-induced desertification in the Sahara-Sahel boundary, enhancing water and livelihood security, and promoting sustainable land use through ecosystem-based adaptation, dune fixation, water resource management, and diversified climate-resilient livelihoods. As approximately 50 per cent of the beneficiaries are women, the project ensures female representation and has income-generating activities that empower women.

Key activities include strengthening governance and coordination for climate adaptation; improving water access and management; supporting climate-resilient livelihoods by promoting climate-smart agriculture and alternative income-generating activities; facilitating community-led adaptation through a Small Grants Facility; and enhancing knowledge generation and dissemination.

The Mauritanian Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development will lead implementation, ensuring alignment with national plans. The project also promotes Locally Led Climate Action by actively involving communities in decision-making and ensuring context-specific, sustainable climate resilience.

SURAGGWA’s objective is to enhance ecological and climate resilience across Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal, while substantially increasing carbon sequestration through landscape restoration.

The Sahelian countries within the Great Green Wall (GGW) region are among the poorest and most vulnerable to climate change. Their economies largely depend on agriculture, livestock, and forestry, with over 70 per cent of rural communities reliant on rainfed agriculture. Climate change further exacerbates ecosystem degradation, biodiversity loss, and the vulnerability of agro-silvopastoral landscapes, threatening food security and the sustainability of local livelihoods.

The programme will restore degraded agro-silvo-pastoral landscapes to build climate resilience and mitigation capacities, develop climate-resilient, low-emission Non-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) value chains to enhance market access and financial inclusion for vulnerable communities, and strengthen GGW institutions to improve coordination, monitoring, resource mobilisation, and knowledge management

The programme supports the African Union-led Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative by enhancing ecological and climate resilience. It contributes to the GGW goals of restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land, creating 10 million new jobs and sequestering 250 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030 through large-scale land restoration efforts.

Local CSOs and CBOs in landscapes-seascapes around the world access grant financing and technical assistance, including capacity development and knowledge sharing to maintain and enhance their socio-ecological resilience, well-being and socio-economic conditions for global environmental benefits.

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Mauritania

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