A Practical Training Manual to Help Communities Deliver Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Congo Basin
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cross the Congo Basin, cities are increasingly exposed to floods and gully erosion; and many communities are already living with the consequences. Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR), the Republic of the Congo (RoC), and Gabon face similar and rising climate risks, compounded by fragility, widespread poverty, and inadequate infrastructure.
To support a more resilient development pathway, the World Bank and the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) commissioned the regional project “Urban Flood and Gully Erosion Risk Management in the Congo Basin”, implemented by a consortium led by OCA Global with GlobalCAD, Meteosim, ResALLience and Climate Change Africa Opportunities (CCAO).
The project promoted the identification, prioritization, and implementation of Nature-based Soil, Water, and Land Management (NbSWLM) practices that:
- Strengthen urban climate resilience, by reducing flood and gully-erosion risks; and
- Enable implementation of locally adapted and priority NbS through capacity development of local governments and communities.
Capacity building was therefore a core pillar of the work. Government officials benefited from peer-to-peer learning workshops in each country, complemented by field visits that grounded discussions in practical examples. At the community level, the consortium developed and field-tested a training manual intended to make NbSWLM practices easier to teach, easier to implement correctly, and more likely to be maintained over time.
Building on what communities already do
Across the five countries, many NbSWLM practices are used in urban and peri-urban areas, often as part of everyday ways of managing land and water. Urban agriculture and forms of agroforestry are common in many neighborhoods. Communities also use practical measures to slow water and stabilize soils, such as wooden check-dams and other small-scale erosion control structures.
These existing practices provide a strong foundation for scaling NbSWLM for urban resilience, because they build on approaches that are familiar, locally feasible, and adaptable to different sites. With the right technical guidance and maintenance routines, they can be strengthened and applied more consistently to reduce flood and gully-erosion risks.
NbSWLM is also well suited to community-led action because many measures are labor-based and do not require heavy equipment. They can be built with basic tools, simple supplies, and locally available planting material. For example, progressive terracing (which combines infiltration trenches and strips of vegetation to control erosion and stabilize slopes) can be established with pickaxes, hoes, spades, shovels, and wheelbarrows, and stabilized with cuttings of locally appropriate grasses.
Why guidance matters for safe, effective implementation
Although these practices can be straightforward to deploy, they still need to be implemented in a technically sound and environmentally appropriate way. If key principles are overlooked, the solutions can underperform or even create new risks. In the context of progressive terracing, for instance, soil stabilization should not rely on invasive plants that may spread beyond the site and cause longer-term harm. It is safer to use locally appropriate species that will not compete aggressively with existing vegetation, while still stabilizing the soil and providing added benefits.
Depending on the local context, options such as Banagrass or vetiver can be suitable, as they help hold soil in place and can also be used as fodder. Just as important is how the terraces are set out on the slope. Trenches need to follow the contour so that water slows down and spreads evenly rather than being channeled into one line. Even a small misalignment can concentrate runoff, speed up flows, and increase erosion instead of reducing it.
Maintenance as the condition for long-term impact
Even when installation is done well, the long-term performance of NbSWLM practices depends on maintenance. Vegetation needs time to establish, and earthworks need time to stabilize. Communities can often carry out maintenance efficiently, but this usually works best when responsibilities are clearly assigned and when small but realistic resources are planned, including time, basic materials, and the incentives or agreements that sustain collective action.
Silvopasture illustrates this long-term dimension particularly well. Integrating trees, forage, and managed grazing can deliver significant benefits, but those benefits only materialize when young trees are protected, watering and weeding are done at the right moments, plants are pruned and maintained, and grazing is managed so the site can recover gradually. Without this continuity, the same practice can appear ineffective, not because the approach is wrong, but because the follow-through was missing.
The Community NbSWLM Training Manual
These realities shaped the development of the Community NbSWLM Training Manual, which was designed specifically for trainers who work with local communities. The aim is to make the transfer of knowledge practical and replicable by providing both teaching materials and facilitation guidance that help trainers prepare, deliver, and adapt training sessions in real-world conditions.
The manual is organized into two complementary parts. The first part is a practical guide for facilitators, with advice on preparation, logistics, and how to run training sessions effectively, including how to structure classroom and field components. The second part provides ready-to-use training materials accompanied by presentation notes and question prompts to support trainers as they guide discussion and hands-on learning.
The training content covers five practices: stone and vegetated weirs, vegetated gabions, vetiver planting on contour lines, progressive terracing, and silvopasture. For each practice, the manual explains what it is, why it is useful, what conditions are needed for implementation, which principles should guide design and installation, and what basic maintenance actions help ensure performance over time. The manual is also complemented by videos filmed during project implementation, which provide additional practical detail and help trainers visualize how key steps look in the field.
The manual is free to download and can be used by community groups, municipal authorities, ministries, NGOs, and any organization interested in using nature-based solutions to strengthen urban resilience. It is intended as a resource that supports credible implementation at community scale, while reducing avoidable errors and reinforcing the long-term maintenance that makes these practices durable.
The ideas presented in this article aim to inspire adaptation action – they are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Global Center on Adaptation.
