Combining reforestation and biodiversity restoration with healthy, local food production is one of the key focus points of the Lake Albert Foundation. Fertile soils and its highland climate make Zombo district in Uganda very suitable for agriculture, but the increasingly intensive nature and expansion of agricultural practices is causing severe soil depletion and deforestation. Unsustainable crop rotation and production of high intensity crops are degenerating soil conditions like nutritional values, water retention capacity and soil life. Additionally, climate change is causing weather patterns to change, making the growing seasons less predictable and causing more and more extreme weather events.

At the same time, population of Uganda is also growing rapidly, increasing the need for healthy, locally and sustainably produced food both currently and in the long term. However, the need to produce more food through agriculture is a leading cause of land conversion and growing human encroachment into natural ecosystems. Lack of soil regenerative farming activities limit any productivity increase per hectare farmed land, and subsequently more ecologically rich land is converted for agriculture, with devastating effects in terms of biodiversity destruction and contribution to climate change.

These developments show the urgent need for innovative approaches to combine sustainable but intensive food production with biodiversity restoration. The Lake Albert Foundation aims to achieve this through two main programmes:

• • Wetland conservation: Biodiversity restoration in wetlands adjacent to farmland can increase the resilience of ecosystems and the communities depending on them. This increased resilience comes from the so- called ‘spill-over effects’ of biodiversity on agriculture, and what is often described as ‘ecosystem services’ (e.g. water retention, carbon sequestration, pollination, pest control, stable (micro)climate, etc.).
• • Syntropic agriculture: Syntropic agriculture is a type of agroforestry/permaculture that serves several main purposes, namely restoring a natural variety and a stable ecosystem both above and below ground, and producing food and other forest products for generating income. This system, designed with natural succession and stratification in mind, can hugely improve degraded soils while still generating income for farmers.

Pilots for both programmes were started in 2020 at one private farm in Zombo district: Kilimo Kisasa. From there, these projects can be expanded to other farmers in the region who get technical and financial assistance to be able to join in landscape restoration.