The Environmental Investment Fund (EIF) and the National Youth Service (NYS) – in collaboration with the Implementation of the Namibia Integrated Landscape Approach of Enhance Livelihoods and Environmental Governance to Eradicate Poverty (NILALEG) Project – on Tuesday signed a public works programme for landscape restoration memorandum of understanding.
The NILALEG project with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), led by the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT), aims to support regional councils, constituencies and communities to implement an integrated landscape management approach in key agricultural and forest landscapes, and to reduce poverty through sustainable nature-based livelihood strategies, that also promote the protection of biodiversity, restoration of forests as carbon sinks, and contribute to avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation.
As the executing entity, the NYS under the encroacher bush control programme, will be responsible for piloting an ecologically sustainable methodology for bush control and aftercare on three resettlement farm sites of 1,000ha each in Otjozondjupa, with a well-managed and trained workforce through NYS; and construct and equip the pilot plant producing and selling graded charcoal, tar and biochar, and support with training, maintenance, marketing, and access.
Approximately 6,000 youth were trained through NYS programmes, but only 30% received decent employment or have full-time jobs.
“This Project comes in very handy, besides our mandate to just train, our Act allows for the NYS to get into commercial activities to support our training programmes, capacitate our training facilities and pay living allowances when we have to deploy the youth to voluntary sites. So, this project will address our challenges relating to youth unemployment among the trained youth at the national services,” said the National Youth Service Commissioner, Dr. Felix Musukubili.
NILALEG will provide funding, make disbursements and provide other administrative support to NYS.
“Two years ago we entered into a partnership with the NYS to look at opportunities where the youth can be engaged, whereby one of those targets was coal production. We are glad that we are moving and making the strides we should and meeting the targets we set. This is our way of seeing how we can resolve some of the challenges faced by the youth,” said NILALEG Project Manager Jonas Nghishidi, Speaking on behalf of the Environmental Commissioner, Timoteus Mufeti.
The NILALEG project also further aims to reverse environmental degradation and maximise sustainable livelihoods based on nature through integrated management of Namibia’s rural landscapes.
