TOWARD A RESILIENT URBAN SIERRA LEONE Increasing resilience through nature-based solutions AT A GLANCE Country: Sierra Leone Risks: Landslides, Flooding, and Erosion Thematic Areas: City Resilience Program, Digital Earth and Nature-based Solutions To combat landslide risk and rising urban heat stress, the Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project is supporting the capital city of Freetown in the restoration of its canopy cover through community-based reforestation. Sierra Leone, Freetown. ©viti / istock.com GROWING CITY, GROWING RISKS 2011 and 2018. This loss of green space in the city has exacerbated geohazards and climate-driven risks, especially Sierra Leone’s urban population is growing rapidly. The for residents already living in unsuitable and precarious national census shows that more than 40 percent of the conditions. The decline of vegetation and its roots—which country’s population now live in urban areas. This migration act to bind sediments, absorb water, and reduce wave of people from rural to urban areas has been attributed to energy—has resulted in an increased severity and impact of the promise of better economic opportunities in the cities. landslides, flooding, and coastal erosion. Rapid urbanization has not come without its challenges, however, as unplanned growth has resulted in the REDUCING RISKS WITH COMMUNITY- expansion of settlements into unsuitable areas, including BASED ACTION AND DISRUPTIVE steep, landslide-prone areas, flood-prone river basins, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES and estuarine shores. This has caused deforestation, an increase in related natural hazards, and a greater number Acknowledging the growing challenges, the Freetown City of residents living in precarious living conditions without Council established a plan to plant and grow 1 million trees access to basic services. as part of its Transform Freetown Strategy for 2019–2022. With financial support from the World Bank and the Global As cities grow, the built environment typically grows at the Environment Facility (GEF), and with technical assistance expense of the natural environment and the ecosystem from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery services it provides. For instance, in the capital city of (GFDRR), the Resilient Urban Sierra Leone Project (RUSLP) Freetown, 12 percent of canopy cover was lost between is working to assist the city to achieve its goal. To date, RESULTS IN RESILIENCE SERIES 936+ people provided with jobs to implement nature-based solutions FIGURE 1. Innovative digital tools can support community- more than 898 residents—mostly local residents—have based nature-based solutions been mobilized, trained, and paid to plant a variety of vegetation—including mangroves, shrubs, and other trees— throughout the city. The project has also taken a step beyond typical projects of its kind by trialing disruptive technologies, such as the mobile-based TreeTracker app developed by Greenstand. This app provides a long-term monitoring system that incentivizes and tracks the growth of the vegetation planted by establishing digital cash micropayments to participants who nurture the new plants, and allowing third-party verification of tree growth to validate data and ensure results on the ground (see figure 1). In addition, each documented tree is tagged with a unique tree ID called an “impact token.” These tokens can be bought, sold, and traded, and can fund additional trees. So far, 5,000 of the tokens have been bought, which will fund more tree planting. The project also used GFDRR financing to pilot innovative artificial intelligence–based urban tree canopy mapping, which will support improved and cost-effective urban forest monitoring. Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the plantings have been completed, with much success. To date, the TreeTracker app has Note: In partnership with the nonprofit Greenstand, the TreeTracker app was used to support the community-based reforestation. recorded the planting of 567,000 trees, shrubs, and grasses. This has included 66,000 mangroves in the city’s estuary areas. The restoration has taken place across 300 communities across and surrounding the city, and includes schools, government buildings, and private properties. The success of this effort has given the city hope that, along with improved institutional capacity and infrastructure, restoring green space through community-based nature- based solutions will achieve the goal of reducing climate and disaster risks. Follow-up work will build support for the establishment of a more formalized urban forestry sector, including supportive guidelines and policy recommendations LOCAL The GFDRR Africa Caribbean Pacific CAPACITY (ACP)-European Union (EU) Program BUILT funded a rapid assessment, called the Post-Mudslides and Floods Needs LESSONS LEARNED Assessment (PFNA), and the Informing Resilient Recovery Policy, Planning, and Investments in Freetown assessments, Risk-informed restoration and ecological analysis which supported establishing a new National Disaster is critical for successful nature-based solutions for Management Agency (NDMA) and building the capacity resilience projects of the city government and local communities to enhance Identifying the areas where nature-based solutions can the use of spatial data for risk-informed decision-making. provide a substantive reduction of climate and disaster Additionally, 800 community climate action ambassadors risks is important, as not every restoration project can were trained as part of the project activities. produce the intended benefits and be considered a nature- based solution for resilience. It is also equally important to consider carefully the species that are selected, based RISK- The Freetown the Tree Town project on which possible vegetation options will best reduce risks INFORMED focused its efforts on restoring along with their required growth conditions, potential INVESTMENTS vegetation in the upper catchment and negative ecosystem services, and impacts/opportunities for high-slope areas identified in the Sierra biodiversity enhancement. Leone Multi-City Hazard and Risk Assessment, along with the support of GFDRR’s ThinkHazard! tool, to address flood Digital disruptive technology is critical for successful risk, landslide susceptibility, and threats to the water supply. community-based nature-based solutions Utilizing new digital technologies that could be used by community participants provided a way for the project to MAXIMIZING To support long-term sustainability and track tree planting and growing, establishing micropayment FINANCE FOR scale up of this effort, the project team incentives for tree growers and creating a credible system DEVELOPMENT is supporting city officials in acquiring additional financing from private and for managing the tree impact tokens available for purchase other public sector sources. This effort has included a to finance additional tree planting. Pilot tree canopy successful bid for the Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors mapping performed as part of the project enhances digital Challenge for $1 million dollars and the African Forest tracking methodologies that will support future urban Landscape Restoration Initiative, or AFR100, financing, forest management and community-based tree planting and which will support planting and growing another 100,000 results reporting. Finally, the use of the spatial tagging of trees in the next year. Moreover, external investors are trees has been key in creating a tree inventory, which can be already purchasing tree impact tokens that will support used to inform decision-making. sustainable tree financing. RESULTS IN RESILIENCE SERIES