Taadoud Transition to Development Project I & II

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Taadoud is implemented by a consortium of six NGOs:

1. Catholic Relief Services
2. Catholic Agency for Overseas Development
3. Norwegian Church Aid
4. Oxfam America
5. United Methodist Committee on Relief
6. World Vision

The project began in 2014 and entered its second phase in 2018. Taadoud I primarily focused on supporting households to recover from the impact of the events of the past 20 years in Darfur. Taadoud II focuses on institution building using a holistic approach of natural resource management that simultaneously improves the productivity of livelihoods and strengthens community and state level disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

The Feinstein International Center at Tufts University leads the operational research component in partnership with the Universities of Al Fashir (North Darfur) and Zalingei (Central Darfur).

Taadoud I

Taadoud I was a three-year humanitarian program that began in 2014. The program took place across all five Darfur states in more than 200 communities.

Taadoud I aimed to support conflict-affected households to rebuild their livelihoods and to prepare them to deal with future shocks and stresses. The operational research showed that the Darfur economy and household resilience are driven by households’ abilities to engage in cultivation and livestock rearing. The long-term success of these livelihood strategies, therefore, depends on access to and sustainable use of natural resources, which in turn depends on relationships and the balance of power among the users of these resources.

The research analyzes how livelihood systems have been affected by the multiple shocks experienced in Darfur, the choices families have made to sustain themselves throughout, and the extent to which they have been successful. The field research was conducted in two phases: 1. a scoping study and 2. follow-up field research in West, South, and East Darfur. Together, these studies contribute to our understanding of resilience in the Darfur context, the nature of resilience in general, and provides guidance toward promoting resilience.

The Feinstein International Center at Tufts University led the operational research in partnership with Ahfad University for Women in Khartoum, Sudan.

Taadoud II

Taadoud II is a resilience program that builds on the learning from Taadoud I. Taadoud II therefore aims to improve natural resource management and governance, reduce chronic malnutrition and increase the resilience of livelihoods of vulnerable populations within all five Darfur states to achieve more sustainable access to natural resources.

Feinstein leads the operational research and uptake strategy in partnership with several Darfur universities. This phase of the research focuses on processes of systemic change to improve the resilience of local communities by:

1. Better understanding the socio-ecological context and relationships that determine access to and availability of resources within the wider landscape
2. Informing and modifying the Taadoud II theory of change and program activities
3. Identifying and engaging with a network

Taadoud II is a five-year program beginning it 2018. It directly supports 177,583 returnee and conflict-affected vulnerable households in 287 communities in 16 localities in Darfur.

Under the Taadoud II program, Tufts University, the University of Al Fashir, and the University of Zalingei have completed a series of studies on the socio-ecological factors and relationships that determine access to natural resources within the wider Darfur landscape. See below for more details about the publications.

Brief 1 — Changing Land Tenure Regimes

Most people in Darfur depend on farming and pastoralist systems of production for their livelihoods. These two systems, or livelihood specializations, have given rise to livelihood strategies predominantly based on either farming or pastoralism, or a combination of both. Traditional farming is rain fed, with some irrigation in the cool dry season in the seasonal river beds and valleys known as wadis. Pastoralism is an extensive grassland-based form of livestock production that depends on livestock moving to access water and grazing resources in areas of high rain fall variability. Types and patterns of livestock mobility vary enormously. Agro-pastoralism is a production system that includes both cultivation and pastoralist livestock production.

This brief reviews farming and pastoralist livelihood systems to highlight their evolving and overlapping tenure regimes. It also discusses the increasing pressure on resources that has contributed to strained relationships and in some cases polarization and conflict. Unless this context is well understood, the problems and challenges cannot be effectively addressed. Finally, the brief considers steps needed to take full advantage of available opportunities for building the resilience of these livelihood systems. The learning brief series aims to promote awareness and understanding of natural resource use and management in Darfur to support the Taadoud II program and wider programs and policies to effectively build resilient livelihoods.

Brief 2 — Transforming Livelihood Systems: Meeting Needs in a Changing World

Livelihood strategies are the way people support themselves. People change their strategies as their opportunities, risks and limitations change. In Darfur, Sudan, the past two decades have seen social, economic and political changes on an unprecedented scale, significantly impacting livelihoods.  

This brief reviews how farming, agro-pastoralist and pastoralist livelihood systems in Darfur are permanently changing in response to these major changes and in the face of ever-increasing pressure on natural resources. It examines these changes by livelihood specialization, describe the different roles men and women play in these changes, and highlight how the changes impact them differently. It also examines how changes in strategies affect the resilience of those strategies and how past strategies have become less effective, driven in part by pressure on natural resources. At the same time, it shows how innovations are providing new opportunities to increase production and revenues while sustainably managing natural resources.  

As all livelihood strategies are transforming, existing strategies are evolving, and new strategies are emerging, this brief aims to help actors working in Darfur to update their understanding of the strategies so that programs and priorities evolve to support the new reality.  

The learning brief series aims to promote awareness and understanding of natural resource use and management in Darfur to support the Taadoud II program and wider programs and policies to effectively build resilient livelihoods. 

Brief 3 — Participation in Integrated Natural Resource Management Projects: Reflections from North Darfur

The natural environment is an integral part of people’s lives and livelihoods in the Darfur region. Whether it’s materials for housing, fuel for cooking, water for domestic use, or the natural resources that are essential for farming and pastoralism, natural resources play a fundamental and universal role as part of people’s lives and livelihoods. The livelihoods that are dependent on natural resources are predominantly farming and pastoralist production, and the wide range of occupations linked to these livelihoods, such as service provision or markets and trade. 

This brief explores community perspectives on integrated natural resource management (INRM) and aims to understand the incentives of natural resource users within Taadoud II areas to participate in INRM interventions. The brief considers what shapes those incentives and how communities perceive the way forward for realizing effective INRM approaches and who should be involved to achieve the objectives of “integrated” NRM. 

The learning brief series aims to promote awareness and understanding of natural resource use and management in Darfur to support the Taadoud II program and wider programs and policies to effectively build resilient livelihoods. 

Brief 4 — Role of Local Governance and Community-Based Institutions for the Peaceful Co-Management of Natural Resources

The majority of people in Darfur live off the land, growing cereals and keeping livestock. The natural environment so critical for people’s livelihoods is a space of great diversity and highly variable conditions—where it is not possible to predict from one year to the next where crops will mature or grass will grow. Therefore, people’s capacity to be in the right place at the right time and take advance of short-lived pockets of opportunities makes all the difference.

However, people’s relationships with their environment are inevitably mediated by society. Inasmuch as livelihood is concerned, what matters is not the natural environment as such—the annual rainfall and its distribution, the rate of evapotranspiration, or the degree of biodiversity—but how these phenomena are experienced through the mediation of social institutions. People’s relationships with the “natural environment” are first and foremost relationships with other people.

This brief explores the idea that social relationships dictate people’s experience of the natural environment on which their livelihoods depend, to discuss the issue of peaceful natural resource management in Darfur.

The study highlights that:

• The ways different groups of users experience their shared space as a ‘resource’ has been transformed and disrupted, with new exclusionary claims by both farmers and pastoralists.
• INRM programming must understand the ways people relate to natural spaces to secure their livelihoods when managing natural resources.
• The more different uses that can be peacefully staked onto the same spaces, the higher the economic value that can be sustainably created.
• NRM interventions need to include the bigger picture (space and time) and assume pastoralism to always be a part of it.

This brief builds on two 2020 studies carried out by the Universities of Al Fashir (North Darfur) and Zalingei (Central Darfur), focusing respectively on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) committees, and on local governance and the Native Administration.

The learning brief series aims to promote awareness and understanding of natural resource use and management in Darfur to support the Taadoud II program and wider programs and policies to effectively build resilient livelihoods.

The Role of Community-Based Natural Resource Management Mechanisms in Sustainable Livelihoods in North Darfur

Researchers from the University of Al Fashir in North Darfur, Sudan conducted this study to identify the ways in which access to and use of natural resources in North Darfur is effectively regulated through community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) mechanisms and what impact these mechanisms have on people’s livelihoods.

The study revealed that there are CBNRM committees in the majority of the studied communities. Their crucial strength is the nomination of committee members by the community themselves. Thus, their legitimacy comes from the community which provides the power to work and succeed in various fields of natural resource access and livelihood systems.

The study discusses key findings related to the role that CBNRM committees play (and do not play) in regulating livelihoods and ecosystems.

The data were collected from three localities: El Fashir, Daresalam and Kalemindo. Seventeen villages/communities/government officials where the Taadoud II program operates were selected for the study.

Role of Native Administration in Integrated Natural Resource Management and Conflict Resolution in Central Darfur State, Sudan

The Native Administration (NA) in Sudan is still commonly known by the term ‘traditional leadership,’ the name given to the formal system in the early 1930s during the British colonial period (1916-1956). Among the powers and responsibilities of the NA system were the manage­ment and conservation of the environment and natural resources, and resolution of conflict over land and natural resources.

Researchers from the University of Zalingei in Central Darfur, Sudan, conducted this study to improve the understanding of the role played by the NA and local traditions in integrated natural resource management in Central Darfur over the last twenty years, and to understand the conflicts and disputes associated with land access.

The study focused on communities targeted by the Taadoud project that employ a range of different livelihood strategies, e.g., farming and herding. Data were collected from 12 villages in Zalingei and Wadi Salih localities in Central Darfur State. These villages were selected to represent different livelihood groups (farmers and pastoralists).