Month: July 2021

The Vajra Foundation for Humanitarian and Sustainable Development is supporting arboRise’s work for Guinean women with a substantial donation. We would like to thank the foundation committee and its president for their support!

With our participation model, we promote the involvement of women farmers in reforestation activities. Their work is remunerated on an equal basis with that of men, in accordance with our ethical principles. The financial contribution of the Vajra Foundation will be used in particular to strengthen this aspect of our activities.

Those who would like to learn more about the context in which the women of Upper Guinea live will be fascinated to read Mabetty Touré’s thesis “Les rapports de genre et la filière néré en Haute Guinée” (2104, Université de Toulouse). In this detailed study, we discover how the exploitation of the néré seed by women is able to increase their autonomy

“Gender asymmetries consisting of differences and inequalities are sometimes transformed in response to changes in society as well as to changes in socio-economic conditions. It is in this context that many women in Upper Guinea have taken initiatives and are currently involved in the exploitation of néré, a harvested product used as a condiment, which gives them greater autonomy and access to the means of production. They join collective organisations and increasingly move to distant horizons, thus overturning the old hierarchy of power based on gender and age.”

The research fund ETH for Development (ETH4D) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich is financing a research project with arboRise. ForDev – the research institute for forest management in the context of development – will study the social impact of our work in Guinea during three field missions: both the visible effects and possible collateral damage or benefits. In this way, we want to discover new possibilities to strengthen the sustainability of our activities by better understanding which local socio-cultural characteristics can favour or prevent reforestation. ForDev has developed a specific and collaborative methodology to study stakeholder interactions in development projects related to forests, especially tropical forests.  This research by ETH4D is in line with arboRise’s commitment to adopt an ethical and people-friendly approach at all times.

Tree planting? let’s check some facts and figures: 100 days for 75,000 trees planted: in three months, our team convinced 75 families in 9 villages to collect and pellet 10,000 seeds each from one of their seed trees, and another 75 families to reforest and maintain 2 hectares of land.

In all, at least 150 people immediately benefited from the project, not to mention the involvement of numerous village and prefectural authorities who encouraged the population to plant trees. Because it is urgent!

750,000 pellets of seed have been sown on 150 hectares of land. Half of them are expected to germinate and half to survive the first three years. One hectare of rainforest has between 300 and 500 mature trees capable of reproducing. So in the long run our action should generate 75,000 diversified trees, useful to the population. Tree planting in Guinea is cost-effective: this reforestation campaign has costed CHF 32,000, i.e. about 45 cents per tree (in comparison, planting in a swiss city costs CHF 50 per tree, meaning 100 times more!).

We are now giving way to the rainy season, which will last until October, and then we will start a new reforestation campaign. Speaking of rains: more and more serious studies show that it is the forests that seed the clouds to make the rain come down – wonderful, isn’t it?

 

What a pleasure to see the first sprouting! The conditions are indeed ideal: it’s raining, it’s warm and the cattle are staying in the pen. It is up to the young tree to take advantage of these conditions to grow and survive parasites and fungal diseases. In our hyper-protected world, we forget that life is full of surprises and risks. Good luck, little shoot!

The sowing of seedballs is an opportunity to bring together the village growers for a little training. Indeed, it is more friendly and efficient to spread the seedballs all together. Under the instructions of our team leader, the villagers can progress in parallel lines. This way the seedballs are spread evenly over the whole field. Each seed has an equal chance to fall in its right place. The second advantage of sowing in lines is that it is easier to find the seedlings to clear when the tall grass has grown to human height.