National REDD+ Strategy and Action Plan.

This National REDD+ Strategy (NRS) is a nationwide sectoral document aiming at (i) reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation; (ii) enhancing carbon stocks through the conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks to achieve the national Vision of a sustainable natural resources management for a green economy, while contributing to Sudan’s prosperity, livelihoods, and wellbeing. This end will be sought within a broader vision that provides co-benefits, including protecting ecosystem services and conserving biodiversity. Guiding principles of the NRS are (i) pursuing low-carbon development; (ii) reducing vulnerability to climate change; (iii) Alignment with national economic development objectives, which the main one is poverty reduction. The document includes several cross-cutting issues, namely (i) gender mainstreaming, affecting particular issues such as food security and small animals breeding; (ii) youth participation; (iii) grievance mechanism. The Strategy highlights 5 Strategy Options, which are the general direction that Sudan will take to achieve the Vision of the REDD+ program, and they are (1) integrated forest landscape management; (2) climate smart agriculture and rangeland management; (3) integrated land use planning; (4) sustainable energy supply and use; (5) promoting participation in climate change responses.
The integrated forest landscape management approach recognizes the inextricable links between forests, natural resources, livelihoods, ecosystem services, and value chains that depend on them. The main actions to be conducted to reduce deforestation and restore the productive capacity of Sudan´s natural capital are the promotion of (i) a smallholder forestry program in selected states for high-value timber, fuelwood/biomass, and non-wood forest product; (ii) State-wide forestry nursery systems to support community-based, afforestation, reforestation, and restoration of degraded lands; (iii) capacity building for sustainable gum production value chain through sustainable finance; (iv) institutional strengthening for fire management; (v) support research towards developing science-based production systems and achieving a highly skilled labor force.
As for CSA, it contributes to the transformation of agricultural systems to address food security, sustain livelihoods and encourage prosperity, and adapt and build resilience to climate change risks while reducing pressure on forests and other ecosystems and reducing greenhouse gases emissions. Furthermore, the Strategy calls for reducing emissions associated with animal overgrazing of the forests and supporting adaptation of local communities through enhancing forest ecosystem productivity of animal feed and good practice grazing management inside the forests.
Regarding the improvement of land use planning, the strategies are to strengthen systems and processes and achieving greater levels of harmonization across policies, improved collaboration among implementing departments, greater levels of capacity, improved land tenure, and a stricter monitoring and enforcement regime to rationalize, organize and harmonize above and below ground resource exploitation and related economic development activities and policies, to encompass environmental and climate change concerns.
The sustainable energy supply and use seek to address Sudan’s energy requirements by increasing householder’s access to efficient and sustainable energy from a sustainable biomass-based value chain by creating business opportunities for the private sector through regulatory and non-regulatory measures, promoting incentives, as well the adoption of efficient cookstoves, and linking biomass producers and consumers.