The awareness of growing climate impacts on land use and management is one of the reasons why the Paris climate change agreement –endorsed at COP 21 in 2015– put into motion the development of a task force to generate recommendations for integrated approaches to avert, minimize, and address displacement driven by climate change. One of the areas of action is agriculture, a matter of central interest to The Gambia, a schematic map of which is seen in Figure 1. Land types are divided into three categories in the Gambia:
- freehold land: individuals own the land outright
- customary tenure: the “Alkalo” is the regulator of the property
- leasehold land: temporary land user (land owned by the Government of The Gambia)
There is a need to better understand their connections. Consistent with this background, the overall objective of the project is: “to investigate and generate empirical data that may provide new knowledge and support to policy formulation on climate change and land use management in The Gambia”.
The specific objectives of the feasibility study are:
Specific Objective 1 Provide new data on the interactions between climate change and land use management in The Gambia.
Specific Objective 2 Investigate the tools to formulate a new land use policy of The Gambia.
Specific Objective 3 Support efforts to enhance the demarcation of land boundaries in The
Gambia.
Specific Objective 4 To enable UTG develop a new degree curriculum on land use management as it relates to climate change.