Nine countries-Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria-share the Niger River Basin's hydrological resources. The global environmental objective of the Reversing Land and Water Degradation Trends in the Niger River Basin Project is to reduce and prevent transboundary water-related environmental degradation; prevent land degradation; and protect globally significant biodiversity, through sustainable, informed, and cooperative integrated management of the Basin, while ensuring greater public involvement in the Basin's decision-making process. The Project development objective is to provide the nine riparians an opportunity to define a transboundary framework for the sustainable development of the Niger River Basin, through strengthened capacity and better understanding of the Basin's land and water resources. The Bank implemented components aim to strengthen NBA's regional management capacity and improve data management capacity. There are six project components. Component 1, Institution Building, augments existing regional and national institutional capacity to manage and implement concurrent regional projects. Component 2, Capacity Building and Public Awareness, promotes activities designed to raise environmental awareness in target communities, facilitate consultations, and build capacity on issues relating to environmental management at the local, national and regional levels. The component includes a public education and awareness program and focused training. Component 3, Data and Knowledge Management, complements ongoing work on water and environment data collection by evaluating the status of the Basin's hydrologic, environmental, and socioeconomic data, and identifying the institutional modalities needed for data collection, sharing and dissemination for decision-makers. The component includes developing an Environmental Information System framework. Component 4, Regional Forum, facilitates the exchange of lessons and good practices from other regional projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, expands on "IW:Learn", and strengthens the relationship with existing Pan-African and international networks of Basin organizations, Component 5, Demonstration Pilots and Micro-grant Program, aims to support two parallel efforts in all nine Basin countries. The first assists communities in tackling environmental problems by implementing nine priority demonstration pilots of good practices in managing land and water resources. In parallel to the demonstration pilots, a series of community-based, micro-grant-supported interventions will be implemented, taking advantage of lessons emerging from the pilots' demonstrations activities. Component 6, finalizes the preliminary Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) conducted during Project preparation in the main stem countries (Benin, Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria) b y extending the diagnostic analysis process to the remaining four riparian countries (Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad and Cote d'Ivoire). Through and on the basis of this extended priority identification process, countries will prepare a Strategic Action Program (SAP), focusing on land and water issues and complementing the Shared Vision's multi-sectoral SDAP.
