Agricultural Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA). Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Concentrations in the Atmosphere through the Strengthening and Promotion of an Integrated Crop-Livestock System in The Gambia.

These Agricultural Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA), proposed for implementation in the Central and Upper River Regions of The Gambia, defines government’s vision for the agriculture sector to transform The Gambia into a major supplier of agricultural products to local and international markets between 2012 and 2015 by increasing food security and boosting the income-generating capacity and the nutritional status of farmers, especially women and youths. These Actions’ main objectives are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and develop a climate change approach through the promotion of an integrated crop-livestock system, sustainable development, poverty reduction and other co-benefits, to promote the restoration of degraded grazing lands and their better utilisation and management, to promote intensive animal husbandry, to facilitate further crop diversification and cultivation in project sites, to facilitate the availability of solar and wind powered irrigation systems, and the expansion of tidal irrigation, to facilitate the acquisition and utilisation of post harvest and food storage and processing technologies.
These Actions are structured as follows: 1) Introduction; 2) General Information, including: objective; background on the agriculture sector; scope of the NAMA; 3) Justification, including: estimation of greenhouse gas emissions reductions; data requirements and collection; opportunities offered by mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture sector; 4) Activities, indicators, outcomes and implementation schedule; 5) Implementation; 6) Required enabling support; 7) Monitoring and evaluation framework; 8) Economic viability. In addition to reducing greenhouse emissions, these Actions focus on underground water resources utilisation and improved watershed protection; the application of improved sustainable natural resources management practices to achieve reduced natural resource degradation, desertification and incidences of bush fires, improved food security, expanded sources of livelihood and incomes and reduced poverty particularly of communities depending on these resources; the availability and applications of appropriate land use and soil management practices to reduce land and soil degradation and depletion; the provision of support to producer groups in farming practices, post-harvest processing, agribusiness development and market linkages; availability of feed resources through animal feed gardening, production of forage crops.