Month: April 2022

There are several steps to making a seeds bomb (or seedball). The first step is to mix the seed species in order to obtain a good specific diversity for each field:

Then all the ingredients are brought together: clay from the lowlands, charcoal which must first be ground into dust, ash which will act as an insecticide and water to make a paste out of it all, which you then roll in your hand. In some families, everyone works at it: father, mother and children.

In this respect, yes, we too ask ourselves: is this child exploitation? Should we forbid these families to work together? Of course, the children have to go to school …but what happens if there is no school within 10 kilometres? There are many difficult questions that need to be answered with sensitivity.

After the coating comes the drying stage, always impressive in the villages as our seeds bomb are found everywhere:

And finally, each family can proudly stand in front of its bag of 10,000 bombs of mixed seeds, ready to be scattered on the plots made available by the field families:

      

See you soon on the fields to sow the seedballs!

Sharing learnings is one of the statutory goals of arboRise. Why? We are convinced that by joining forces we altogether will have a greater impact. And if other organizations chose to adopt our low-tech and low-cost methods and manage to increase the area they reforest, it will be very beneficial for the climate.

It is also important to create policies that favor nature-based solutions and reforestation that takes into account the expectations of local populations. That’s why we spent two days in Berlin with the class of students of the Joint Master in Global Economic Governance and Public Affairs (GEGPA) of the International Center for European Training and the Luiss School of Government. Using the example of arboRise, we discussed the challenges of reforestation and the solutions available to governments to promote natural, participatory and sustainable solutions.

Because the idea was not only to transmit our knowledge but to benefit from the students’ knowledge too. Thanks to their passionate engagement, we were able to grasp some very good ideas that will help optimize our approach and make it even more sustainable. The sharing of learnings goes both ways!

The fight against climate change will have more impact if we join forces locally on the ground, with approaches like arboRise (empowering communities to implement best practices in reforestation, promoting biodiversity and improving living conditions) and globally by putting in place policies and governance that address ecological, social and economic challenges.

#reforestation #biodiversity #inclusion #sustainability #gender #climate change #naturebasedsolutions #lowtech