Benin

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Benin lies between the Niger River in the north and the coastal plain in the south. The low-lying southern plateaus offer a Guinean forest-savanna landscape. The Atacora chain, which stretches along the north-western border and culminates at Mount Sokbaro (658 m), consists mainly of savannah and semi-arid mountains.

The diversity of flora and fauna, more concentrated in protected areas, remains threatened by the expansion of wildfires, extensive livestock farming, overexploitation of forest stands, overgrazing, pesticide use, poaching and agricultural expansion. The main anthropogenic pressures affecting biodiversity in Benin are habitat loss, unsustainable use, overexploitation of resources and pollution. These pressures are exacerbated by climate change and soil degradation, which make flooding episodes near rivers more recurrent, while coastal erosion constitutes a heavy loss for the economy. Desertification in the northern part is another major threat to the livelihoods of populations in need of alternatives.

Access to the IBAT sheet

In Benin, the multi-stakeholder dialogue focused on 3 key areas to help identify solutions for preserving biodiversity. Firstly, "biodiversity cafés" were held to enable sector stakeholders to discuss and reflect on the biodiversity issues linked to their activities. Secondly, a workshop to validate the in-depth analysis of the sectors, to enrich the report and promote the appropriation of the commitment scenarios. Finally, a dialogue workshop bringing together all relevant stakeholders to draw up priorities for action.

The process led to a number of possible commitments (with the exception of the cotton sector, where the solutions are identical to the identified commitment scenarios), without however succeeding in agreeing on a financially quantified action plan.

Options chosen and scenarios discussed

Country profiles IPPS

After supporting the 15 countries in identifying priority sectors, and facilitating the commitment of private-sector players to biodiversity, BIODEV2030 is building on the momentum created to roll out the voluntary commitments on a pilot territory scale, and to strengthen the integration of biodiversity into the countries' sectoral public policies.

The sectors targeted for Phase II are cotton, soy, rice and timber. In order to identify the most relevant sectoral public policy instruments (IPPS) to be created, abolished or modified, BIODEV2030 has called on Altai Consulting. This support is intended to contribute to the coherence of economic, sectoral (agriculture, mining, fisheries, forestry, etc.) and environmental (particularly biodiversity-related) policies, a key aspect of the mainstreaming approach. This global integration of biodiversity helps to prevent economic and sectoral policies from encouraging actors (producers) to adopt production practices that are harmful to nature, in contradiction with a country's biodiversity commitments.

Altai has developedIPPS sheets for each country. The Benin sheet is available via the button above.

The ministries are involved in the national dialogue workshops, notably the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries (MAEP) and the Ministry of the Environment and Sustainable Development (MCVDD). The Directorate General of Water, Forests, and Hunting (DGEFC) of the MCVDD is actively engaged in facilitating the implementation of project activities in Benin. In partnership with these ministries, the project prioritizes the following sectoral reforms:

• Reforms to input subsidies to promote organic inputs;
• Introduction of stricter phytosanitary standards in agriculture;
• Development of participatory forest management plans;
• Update to the Forest Code.

Concept Notes

With the aim of helping stakeholders in pilot areas (private, public, CSOs) to collectively define actions to reduce pressures on biodiversity, transition projects towards nature-positive practices, or even nature-based solutions, will be developed on the basis of the change actions identified during the multi-stakeholder dialogue, and then brought to the attention of potential funders.

The BIODEV2030 pilot project will be implemented within Agricultural Development Cluster 4 (PDA4). The project aims to help preserve biodiversity and ecosystem services while strengthening the socioeconomic resilience of local communities and their food security. Specifically, the project seeks to achieve the following objectives:

• restore the ecological integrity of critical ecosystems such as protected and community forests,
• accelerate the agroecological transition through the widespread adoption of nature-based agricultural practices,
• develop sustainable value chains (e.g., soybeans, shea nuts, rice, cashews, beekeeping) by leveraging local biological resources and promoting income-generating activities (IGAs), and enhance the economic resilience of local communities,
• capitalize on and disseminate local knowledge and relevant innovations regarding the balance between economic development and biodiversity conservation, while promoting their intergenerational transmission through participatory action-research platforms
• institutionalize a polycentric and inclusive (multi-stakeholder) governance framework, equipped with innovative financing mechanisms, aimed at fully integrating conservation imperatives into strategic planning and local economic development.

Synergies have been identified with the TAZCO project, which aims to scale up agroecology in the cotton sector. Funded by AFD and implemented since 2017 in the north of the country, this project pursues complementary objectives to the pilot project to be developed under BIODEV2030 Phase II: improving soil fertility, maintaining yields, increasing farm resilience, or capacity building for players in the sector.