Sebeya Catchment Restoration — State-Led Cash-for-Work Terracing to Protect a Flood-Prone Watershed (Rwanda)

The Sebeya river catchment in Rwanda's Western Province spans about 286 km² across Rutsiro, Ngororero, Nyabihu and Rubavu districts. Decades of deforestation, poor agricultural practices and unregulated mining left steep hillsides eroding, triggering recurrent floods and landslides that displaced hundreds of residents.

From June 2019 to 2023, the Rwanda Water Resources Board (then named the Rwanda Water and Forestry Authority) led a four-year, Rwf22 billion (about $24 million) restoration programme funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with IUCN, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and local NGOs (RWARRI, APEFA) as delivery partners. Rather than a market-based PES, the state ran a cash-for-work model: local residents were paid to dig radical and progressive hillside terraces, cut trenches, treat gullies, protect riverbanks and plant trees, converting the catchment's erosion problem directly into employment.

By project end, over 1,500 hectares of radical terraces and 836 hectares of progressive terraces had been built (roughly 2,400 hectares, about 30% of the catchment), soil erosion had fallen by close to 90%, and potato yields on treated slopes rose from 8–10 to 20–30 tonnes per hectare. More than 15,000 people were employed, providing crucial income during the COVID-19 downturn.

The programme is also a documented cautionary case: a 2023 Rwandan parliamentary committee found that some terraces sat unused because of acidic soil or because labourers who built them had not been paid, and geomorphology researcher Judith Uwihirwe warned that poorly engineered terraces can trap water underground and destabilise slopes in this seismically active catchment — risks that any city or watershed authority replicating the model should design against.