Regenerative approaches for building climate change resilience into EU agricultural regions prone to desertification

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

BACKGROUND

Dryland regions cover over 40% of the earth's land surface and are home to more than two billion people. They are highly adapted to climatic variability and water stress, but also extremely vulnerable to damaging human activities such as deforestation, overgrazing and unsustainable agricultural practices, which cause land degradation and desertification. Climate change will increase the risk of desertification for the agricultural sector in the EU’s southern countries by decreasing annual rainfall and by more severe heatwaves increasing drought conditions. Existing climate change projections for cereal and olive production areas in Cyprus suggest that they will be the most affected from future drought intensification. The region of Thessaly in Central Greece is the major cereal producing area of the country and the second most important agricultural area in Greece with very high sensitivity to desertification. Crete, Southern Greece, is the major olive producing region of the country, but 37% of the island's area – mainly the eastern part – is characterised as critically sensitive to desertification. 

OBJECTIVES

LIFE AgrOassis focuses on dryland regions in Cyprus and Greece that face great water scarcity. The project team will develop, demonstrate and apply innovative methods and best practices to efficiently combat desertification. This will help both climate change resilience and adaptation processes in dryland regions of the EU’s most south-eastern countries, by protecting topsoil, promoting mulching, and applying compost into degraded soils.

 

The project’s specific objectives are to:

• Promote minimum tillage or no-tillage and mulching in cereal fields and orchards of drylands characterised by poor soil quality and very low natural vegetation cover in Cyprus, Thessaly, and eastern Crete.
• Combine the above practices with effective afforestation of degraded field margins, by installing drought and fire resilient hedgerows in both countries, with the aim of restoring and protecting soil health.
• Provide additional means to government authorities in Cyprus to more efficiently monitor land management, and to promote educational activities in both countries on how to effectively and profitably combat desertification.
• Kick-start compost production in Cyprus by creating two facilities (one based on municipal waste, and the other on prunings from fire-affected plant biomass and chicken manure, with a total output of 1 000 m³; 700 tn/yr).

 

RESULTS

Expected results:

• Work in 500 ha of agricultural land reduces risk of desertification, in cereals and orchards in Cyprus (ca. 350 ha) and in Thessaly (ca. 100 ha) and in olive groves in eastern Crete (50 ha). Within these areas around 30 km of hedgerows (6 000 trees and 12 000 shrubs) installed in burnt and/or degraded agricultural land in Cyprus, replicated on ca. 3 km in Greece (600 trees and 1 200 shrubs).
• Increased soil cover by 30%, soil organic matter (SOM) by 30% (e.g. from 15 to 19.5 g C/kg), and summer topsoil moisture by 30%, and decreased soil surface temperature in these 3 regions, including reduced emissions from 2 422.70 to 26.26 tn CO₂ eq/yr and increased sequestration by 1 015.3 tn CO₂ eq/yr at the end of the project; to improve soil biodiversity by 30% and improve agricultural production by at least 10%.
• Identification and removal of obstacles related to inappropriate governance and policies that obstruct the implementation of the European Green Deal.
• Promotion of educational activities in Greece and Cyprus for at least 800 farmers, students and stakeholders on how to effectively combat desertification and how this can be turned into profit.
• Mobilisation of the private sector by utilising available unexploited resources to promote the circular economy in the agro-sector of Cyprus, and mobilisation of private investment towards close-to-market solutions on green waste sustainability and sustainable soil management (e.g. resilient crop plants and hedgerows, and sustainable production of compost).
• Shift in farmer attitudes, by rewarding farmers by 200 to 300 euro per ha for managing and storing carbon in the soil, improving soil nutrients availability, reducing emissions, and increasing soil water content.
• Engagement of at least 2 000 farmers, stakeholders and policymakers in the three project areas, and dissemination of project outcomes to over 45 000 directly interested recipients (farmers/consultants/academics).
• Foundation built for large-scale replication of successful technical and policy-related solutions in Cyprus, Greece and other EU regions prone to desertification.