Restoring Diari: trees, farms, and livelihoods in Northern Ghana

Northern Development Society (NORDESO) is implementing a community-led landscape restoration project in Northern Ghana, where ecosystems are under severe pressure from deforestation, soil degradation, bushfires, and climate change impacts such as erratic rainfall and declining farm productivity.

Our project works directly with rural communities who depend on the land for farming and livelihoods. We engage youth, women, and smallholder farmers to restore degraded land through tree planting, agroforestry, community nurseries, and climate-smart agriculture practices. Native and fruit trees are planted to improve biodiversity, restore soil health, and increase long-term climate resilience.

The ecosystem we work in is highly vulnerable but also highly dependent on natural resources. As a result, restoration must be community-driven to succeed. We therefore train and support local groups to lead planting, maintenance, and protection of restored areas, ensuring ownership and sustainability.

Beyond environmental recovery, the project creates green jobs, improves food security, and strengthens rural incomes. By linking ecosystem restoration with livelihoods, we are building healthier landscapes and more resilient communities across Northern Ghana. “This funding will directly speed up our community-led landscape restoration work in Northern Ghana by expanding tree planting, agroforestry systems and climate-smart agriculture activities in degraded rural communities.

Our organisation has already made an impact by planting over 13,000 teak trees and 3,000 mango trees and training smallholder farmers, youth groups and women’s associations on sustainable land management practices. However, the current funding has limitations that limit our ability to scale up restoration activities, improve monitoring systems and expand community nurseries to meet the increasing demand.

With this grant, we will continue to increase restoration sites, increase seedling production and improve survival rates through regular maintenance and community stewardship. We will also improve data collection and impact measurement using field-based monitoring and digital tools to ensure transparency and measurable environmental results.

Please find attached our outline project budget, photos of the restoration activities in progress and evidence of the impact of previous interventions. These materials demonstrate our ability to plan, implement, monitor and sustain large-scale ecosystem restoration that delivers tangible livelihood and climate benefits to rural communities.

This funding will allow us to go beyond small-scale restoration and make a coordinated, landscape-level impact across Northern Ghana to improve biodiversity, soil health and resilience of communities.