Faunal Activities for Climate Action: A southern Africa network to find synergies between biodiversity and carbon storage in woodlands

Synergies among sustainable development goals are crucial for low-income countries where sustainability challenges are high but resources limiting.

Current climate change mitigation programs revolving around re- and afforestation may conflict with biodiversity and local livelihoods in savanna-dominated ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa.

We urgently need to identify key processes that could provide synergies between biodiversity, climate change mitigation and livelihood services.

In Faunal Activities for Climate Action (FACA), we develop a new partnership between Swedish, African and European scientists to investigate the hypothesis that restoring animal diversity will promote the successful dispersal and pollination of a broad diversity of tree species, essential for carbon storage and other ecosystem services.

Our new partnership will expand the southern African vegetation-monitoring network, SEOSAW, with animal diversity monitoring using novel passive acoustic sensors. We will implement this using a combination of online workshops and local training sessions in Africa.

We initially focus on 2 SEOSAW partners (Angola and Mozambique) and add Madagascar as the only southern African country currently not in SEOSAW.

We will then develop larger grant applications involving all 12 southern African countries currently included in SEOSAW.

This partnership will expand the role of African scientists in global change research, giving Africa a stronger voice in global policy platforms.