Research and action for locally led nature restoration

Reversing Environmental Degradation in Africa and Asia (REDAA) is a programme that supports research and action in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia by offering grants and facilitating mutual learning and technical support between partners.

REDAA is funded by UK International Development from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and managed by IIED.

The REDAA programme aims to enhance local capacity and foster collaboration among practitioners. It seeks to broaden the impact of its research-to-action initiatives by sharing generated knowledge with a wider community of practice.

What is IIED doing?

IIED conducted regional consultations and commissioned scoping studies to find out more where the gaps are in innovation and research. The findings from these activities have informed REDAA’s grant calls.

Supported initiatives are offered a range of support by the IIED team managing REDAA. This might be, for example, around research methodologies, project monitoring and evaluation, reporting, strategic communications and learning and networking.

Supported initiatives

REDAA currently supports 27 locally led research-to-action initiatives, taking place across 25 countries and covering a diverse range of landscapes and ecosystems.

REDAA grants funded initiatives that are locally led, interdisciplinary and focused on solutions for ecosystem restoration and climate resilience, enabling people and nature to thrive.

Grants were awarded to initiatives for improving evidence, creating new tools or strengthening governance systems to support actions that are nature positive, improve local livelihoods and tackle the impacts of climate change.

Radio changes behaviour and brings restoration action to life, in Kenya and Tanzania

In southern Kenya and northern Tanzania, audience numbers have greatly risen for news features, first-person narratives and talk shows about farming and nature restoration issues, broadcast in local languages by four FM radio stations and delivered on memory sticks to listener groups in communities with solar-powered hand-held devices.

Following capacity strengthening work, assessment reveals that over 100 practitioners, in the radio stations and among organisations with expertise they draw on, are taking forward the learning about what radio approaches work best. The four stations are producing weekly content drawing on research on food systems, environmental health and climate change, and bringing work at community level to life – on climate-smart farming, land restoration, Indigenous knowledge and ensuring marginalised voices are featured.

Some 125 programmes have been produced to date and assessment – brought together in research papers and policy briefs - further shows that 25% of radio audiences and 50% of listener group members (listening to the programme content brought to communities) are adopting new behaviours that favour nature restoration.

(Project led by WWF Tanzania/BBC Media Action) 

Through what it supports and the learning it shares and communicates, the programme aims to help policymakers, practitioners and people in business to have a better understanding of natural landscapes, prioritise more ambitious sustainable strategies and allocate the right financial and human resources to take action.

Agroforestry approaches adopted and spread by farmers, in Viet Nam

Farmers in Nam Mon and Hoang Thu Pho communes, in Northern Vietnam, were joined with project partner organisations to co-design climate-resilient, market-led agroforestry pilots. The project enabled farmers to participate in an FPIC process, study visits to successful agroforestry models, hands-on training sessions in field design for agroforestry, and community discussions on species selection.

The project continues to engage communities and support farmers with technical tools, monitoring systems including a climate forecasting tool, and ongoing capacity development, and facilitates farmer-to-farmer exchange and documentation of successful practices in local languages to promote replication in other areas.

This represents a step-change for livelihoods and sustainable land use in these communes as local actors take opportunities and make their own decisions about agroforestry planning and design. The work has also begun to be mainstreamed in local government with improved institutional systems supporting agroforestry in the Lao Cai Farmers Union, local departments of Agriculture and Environment, and commune authorities.

(Project led by International Center for Research in Agroforestry [ICRAF] Vietnam)

Grant calls

In June 2023, REDAA launched its first grant call. It received more than 1,200 applications, and 21 locally led research-to-action initiatives received funding ranging between GBP£200,000 to £500,000.

REDAA's second grant call launched in May 2024. It focused on scaling up locally-led restoration and invited proposals for locally-led, multi-locational, research-to-action restoration programmes in specific sub-regions and environments in Africa and Asia. The call received more than over 400 applications and eight programmes have been awarded a grant of between £1m and £1.5m.

Taking place across 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, all these initiatives address integrated action for nature, climate and people. Meet the REDAA supported initiatives.

The REDAA programme runs until 2029.