The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) joins the global community in commemorating the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, observed on 17 June 2025.
This year’s theme “Restore the Land, Unlock the Opportunities”, resonates profoundly with our day-to-day work in the many projects we implement in our member countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zambia.
Due to global warming, climate change is becoming more evident in many countries in the form of recurrent droughts and desertification.
Southern Africa is affected by desertification covering over two-thirds of her land area. The degradation of arable and pastoral lands continues to accelerate, driven by prolonged droughts, unsustainable land-use practices, overgrazing, deforestation, and the impacts of climate change.
In the last 30 years, many countries in the region have experienced harsh and unforgiving climatic conditions where drought is not an occasional event, but a recurring reality. Coupled with desertification, these challenges threaten not only the health of our ecosystems, but the very foundation of our rural livelihoods, food security, and socio-economic development.
In response to these challenges and others, SASSCAL generates data; invests in people; and integrates restoration of land and unlocks opportunities for the people.
SASSCAL through GMES and Africa project, under the Sahel region, is working to combat desertification and land degradation through the MISLAND (Monitoring, Impact, and Sustainability of Land Degradation) service alongside the UNCCD. MISLAND is being customized at the country level to integrate Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) indicators and UNCCD reporting requirements. Furthermore, it will aid in disseminating information simplified for decision making, and customizable to provide actionable insights and in the end guide policy design/implementation in Africa and monitoring SDGs (especially 15.3.1) for adaptive land management and restoration.
This year, SASSCAL’s TIPPECC Project, in partnership with GERICS (Germany), has made significant progress in developing the Climate Services Gateway, a digital platform that delivers real-time climate insights to farmers, researchers, and policymakers across Southern Africa. This portal will empower stakeholders to detect drought conditions early and take timely action to reduce their impacts, thereby enhancing resilience to climate change in the region.
By making knowledge accessible, dynamic, and actionable, we are transforming how decisions are made from the field to the policy table.
Together, they build ecological resilience while unlocking economic opportunities for the people of Southern Africa. SASSCAL does not merely study the land but invests and restores it while coordinating science that speaks directly to the needs of our communities, ecosystems, and economies.
Let us, therefore, as a collective, continue to restore the land, not as an obligation, but as our shared opportunity.
For more information, please contact SASSCAL communications at communications@sasscal.org
