Resilience and adaptation to climate change in the Sitatunga Valley

The Sitatunga Valley Community Nature Reserve (PNCVS) is a community conservation area of over 80,000 hectares, officially created in 2010 thanks to CREDI-ONG. Situated around 30 km as the crow flies from Cotonou, the economic capital of Benin, the Sitatunga Valley is a patchwork of marshy meadows, lakes and riparian forests. With rapid urbanisation, these diverse ecosystems and their exceptional biodiversity are under enormous pressure from human activity. Previous action taken to mitigate this has helped to halt the degradation of the natural resources on which local communities depend. Efforts to raise eco-citizen awareness have laid the foundations for community governance. A number of economic development initiatives have been launched to support local communities and reduce their dependence on natural resources.

The main aim of this project is to pursue and strengthen the initiatives already implemented to adapt and improve the resilience of communities in the Sitatunga Valley to climate change. It strives to build on conservation efforts targeting key biodiversity areas in the Sitatunga Valley. In particular, the aim is to strengthen the reserve’s governance system through institutional support to enable local communities to gradually take over management of the reserve. By improving the reserve’s ecotourism offers and services while promoting environmentally friendly activities, it helps create green jobs to ensure participative conservation of biodiversity and high-potential natural habitats. Environmental education activities, ecological monitoring and data collection are all key elements of this initiative.