Overview

ALTER (Alternative Carbon Investments in Ecosystems for Poverty Alleviation) is a 3 year international research initiative with partners from Ethiopia and Uganda. ALTER aims to demonstrate how improved knowledge about soil degradation can be used to address poverty issues.

Solutions to soil degradation are not simple and require a much better understanding of how people benefit from soils, what they stand to gain if they can improve the condition of the soils that they manage, what they would need to do to accomplish this and what barriers may prevent this. ALTER will provide innovative yet practical information to governments in Africa on how to make effective use of existing and new soil data.  ALTER also aims to gain better insight into the likely success of different management options and investment strategies to improve soils, and the goods and services that they supply.