To be more efficient, this activity is done in groups: everyone stands on one side of the field to be planted, in two lines with a space of two metres between each person. The people in the first line each make a small hole in front of them with the hoe, then take two large steps forward and repeat the operation. The people in the back line then place a seedball in each hole and take two large steps forward to the next hole. And so on to the other end of the field.
In this way a density of 5000 diverse seedballs per hectare is achieved, of which about 60% will germinate during the rainy season. Spot seeding eliminates weeds around the sapling and facilitates root penetration into the soil. It also prevents the pellet from rolling off the field when a heavy rainfall falls.
Direct seeding makes it easy for the whole population to participate and creates a collective enthusiasm that motivates everyone.
Today, we visited 7 plots sown last year to measure the germination and survival rate. Suspense! Will the seedlings survive the drought, herbivores, fire and competition from other species?
The observations are very interesting and motivating!
Firstly, at this time of year, the abundant vegetation makes it difficult to identify “our” shoots. So there is no need to use aerial images with our drone, it is green on green. On one of the plots of land, the shoots exceed human size:
The second observation is that natural regeneration also takes care of our fields: many seeds present in the soil or brought by animals have also germinated and it takes the trained eye of our partner Guidre to count the “good” shoots. Fortunately having sown in line helps to spot our plants 🌱🪴
Thirdly there are huge differences between plots, caused mainly by fire and also the nature of the terrain. If the plot has been hit by a bushfire, the seedlings with too short roots die while the others sprout and can survive. This is why we started this year to make “poquets” (small holes in the soil) before placing the seed pellet, which favours the depth of the roots. Of the seven plots visited, two had a survival rate of practically zero, while the other five had a survival rate of between 60% and 80% (not counting natural regeneration!!!).
Fourth observation: it is mainly certain pioneer species that have germinated. The seeds of other species will wait for the right moment, sometimes for several years.
Fifthly: some owners have decided of their own free will to enrich the plantation with other species (alas, often with cashew).
If we count the number of stems from all origins (arboRise direct seeding and natural regeneration), we get roughly 10,000 stems per hectare, or 1 plant per square metre (which is much higher than the 5,000 seed pellets we sow on each hectare). This density will decrease over the next few years, due to natural competition between the trees, until it reaches about 1000 trees per hectare in twenty years.
Beyond the germination rate, it is also the biodiversity to which arboRise contributes, since we facilitate the dispersion of our mix of 40 species on the land we sow.
The training of the Community Management Committees has started!
As a reminder, in each of the 26 villages where arboRise carries out its reforestation activities, we have formed a Community Management Committee of 15 to 17 members (including several women) whose mission is to develop activities and infrastructures for the population (in all areas: environment, agriculture, health, mobility, etc.).
For 2 days we welcome 52 delegates (2 per CMC) from the 26 villages to Linko. They are provided with food and accommodation and receive a comprehensive training on good governance, good leadership behaviour, structuring their committee and building hedgerows.
At the official introduction to the seminar the Sub-Prefect made a strong plea for the project and formulated very clear expectations in particular to eliminate the practice of slash and burn (as required by Guinean law). All the official speeches are recorded by a journalist and broadcast in full several times on the local radio, which allows us to explain our approach in all the villages that are not yet participating and to prepare the ground for the future.
Each delegation will then pass on this knowledge to the other members of the Committee in each village. A first step towards the sustainability of our action! Indeed, developing local skills and empowering communities is essential to ensure a sustainable impact of our action. Capacity Building belongs to the Sustainable Development Goals !
The Community Management Committees also form a platform for the exchange of good practices: they are encouraged to identify good examples in their village and to share these models with the CMCs in other villages. The CMCs will also assist farmers who are short of manpower to build firebreaks and hedgerows. In this way, a positive emulation and mutual help is created within the whole region, a wish frequently expressed by the population in interviews conducted by Léa Ackerer in April 2022.
Back in Guinea to conclude our 2021-2022 reforestation campaign and draw conclusions just before the winter season. The rains have already started and the country is a real paradise. The countryside is green, the mango trees are bursting with fruit, the clothes look even more colourful than usual, and the trees are not to be outdone, like this magnificent flamboyant in bloom:
With our partner Guidre we start with a series of workshops to draw the lessons from the six months of campaigning in the field: what worked well? what surprised us? what were the obstacles? how do people feel about our approach? etc. By cross-checking everyone’s perceptions with the observations from Léa Ackerer’s interviews, we get a fairly coherent overall picture of our impact and the potential for improvement.
Then we list all the risks of our project together. Collective intelligence ensures that nothing is forgotten and that each threat is assessed at its true value (level of impact, degree of probability). And of course, for each risk we identify the prevention or mitigation measures.
The next topic is the quality of our partnership, which is very important to us! As our cultural filters are different, we tackle the question from the perspective of experience and share significant anecdotes that, on both sides, have marked our perception of each other, both good and bad. After looking back and we look forward and formulate our respective wishes for the future strengthening of our partnership.
We end with a game of arboRise, which shows that our field supervisors are well aware of all the levers of prosperity and know how to manage their cultivation choices admirably. Our project offers an alternative to cashew monoculture that allows the population to benefit from the income from carbon credits.
In conclusions: our strong partnership allows us to anticipate risks and simulate several scenarios to optimise our environmental and social impact.
Members of the association play a “serious game” developed for arboRise by the ForDev of the ETHZ. The aim? to better understand the stakes of our action in Guinea. By playing it is easier to put yourself in the shoes of the families participating in our project. By observing the other players, we also discover how others react differently to the same reality.
Because a game is also a way of resolving tensions that may arise during a change. Whether it is the construction of windmills in Switzerland or the creation of a protected nature reserve in a tropical country, the ecological transition brings about changes that disrupt the lives of the inhabitants. Any conflicts that arise can be resolved in court or behind bars. But these are win-lose outcomes that are not sustainable. It is preferable to seek an amicable settlement, through mediation for example. The serious games developed by the ComMod association are precisely mediation tools: they allow participants to
take a step back from the context of the conflict
become aware of the issues at stake for the other parties involved
observe their ways of managing the situation
test new ways of dealing with the situation and observe the effects on others
invent solutions that work for everyone
What do we learn from the game?
We have an impact on the land on the spot and it is important to choose land families that have enough land
The conditions we offer through carbon credits must be more attractive than the income from cashew monocultures
We must encourage co-management to encourage each village community to manage itself
We will need to help spend the future income we generate wisely and fairly
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:
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.
We have decided to extend the scope of our reforestation campaign to 500 hectares in view of the spectacular progress made by our team in the field over the last 2 months.
After convincing 180 families to join our project in January and February, i.e. 20 families more than expected, and as there were only 70 families left to convince in March and April, we quickly made the choice to gather 100 new families, i.e. 100 additional hectares. 100 hectares is a very important number of trees: about 50’000 new trees. From a financial point of view, this means increasing the annual budget by about CHF 20,000, which our resources easily allow.
These 500 hectares will be planted with 2’500’000 seed pellets from 250 different trees. A greater number of trees planted means a greater contribution to the fight against global warming, since a tropical forest of one hectare absorbs each year the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of a Swiss family.
Do you remember the arboRise game ? On 8th February in Paris, we tested a playful approach to understanding decision-making processes in a village community. One month later, Léa Ackerer, commissioned by ETH’s ForDev, tests the game in the field, in the small village of Diaradouni and then in Manakoro, in the south of the Linko sub-prefecture.
The arboRise game is very simple: the four players receive cards representing their fields, with different degrees of fertility. They can then play their cards (cultivate their fields) in several zones, representing the types of crops: food crops (cassava, fonio, etc.), cashew nut plantations for cash, or agroforests with arboRise. Each type of crop involves specific costs and income, as in real life. And as in real life, one can choose to spread out one’s activities or “bet” everything on a single crop.
What did this experience bring out? In addition to the smiles of the players, it seems that our game is a very good awareness-raising tool, to show the impact of the choice of crops (groundnuts, cassava, cashew nuts or reforestation by arboRise) on the prosperity of the community.
A key lesson seems to be ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket‘: resist the lure of immediate gains and continue to grow food crops even if they are less profitable.
We also observed that women play more conservatively, while men take more risks. We had also expected more collective strategies to emerge, but the players chose to focus on their own interests. This is an important lesson: in our fieldwork we will make sure that we create the conditions to strengthen the cooperation between the families involved in our project.
Playing a role-playing game implies that a few simple rules are set and that it is then the players who invent new rules as the game progresses. Such an evolution implies that the game master invites the players to seize this space of freedom. This is of course what was done on the spot, but it is possible that our interpreter got caught up in the game and did not translate Lea’s instructions as faithfully as he should have. Such are the vagaries of fieldwork.
We will obviously continue to develop and use this game as a real awareness-raising tool. For more information on the use of serious games in development: https://www.commod.org/
