News and Activities

One of the aims of the Cooperative, and the main role of the Cooperative Committee, is to draw up a key for distributing the carbon revenues. It is certainly not up to arboRise to define how this income will be shared among the cooperative members. This choice must be made by those primarily concerned, in accordance with local traditions and customs. But what will these criteria be? And how will they be weighted? Should effort and merit be taken into account, or should income be distributed uniformly? Can fate be invoked to justify certain disappointing results? etc. Rather than discuss these criteria in the abstract, we opted for serious games, which are more effective. In practical terms, we used pre-printed tarpaulins with a number of scenarios on them, as in this case, where the aim was to distribute income according to the hazards suffered by the landowners: Each member of

In October last year we founded the Cooperative of the field-families in Linko to manage the new arboRise forests as a common asset (see our report here), and on 9 July 2024 the Cooperative’s General Meeting was held. This year it was a question of electing the organs of the cooperative: In preparation for the election of the 26 members of the Comité Coopératif, each village had previously elected two representatives, one man and one woman. At the General Assembly, we simply used a hat in which 14 women’s tickets and 12 men’s tickets were placed. Each village drew a ticket at random and that’s how we ended up with a Cooperative Committee made up of a majority of women, all recognised in their village, and therefore visible at sub-prefecture level. —- In some circles, there is a great deal of self-pity about the condition of African women. For our

How much CO2 does a forest absorb per year in the project area? This is the key question that all reforestation projects must answer in order to obtain certification and attract donors. The simplest solution is to rely on scientific studies that have measured biomass growth in similar forests. The problem: very few articles on African forests have been published on this subject. Fortunately, the Hérault et al. research team has quantified the growth of several of our project’s tree species in the Korhogo region of Côte d’Ivoire, 400km from our project, over 30 years (The long-term performance of 35 tree species of sudanian West Africa in pure and mixed plantings). Another, more precise approach is to measure the biomass of mature forests in the project area, and then deduce annual growth. This is what we have done with our partner EcoAct. Before we can begin, we need to accurately

Which natural and anthropogenic factors influence tree growth on land reforested by arboRise? To find out, we were lucky enough to have our research project selected by EPFL as part of the Design Projects course. In this compulsory course, master’s students in the ENAC department are responsible for providing scientific answers to problems posed by companies, local authorities and others. This applied research represents around 500 hours of work for each pair, so it’s a real scientific analysis, supervised by EPFL professors. Ines and Aurèle were immediately interested in our project, and we were lucky enough to benefit from their expertise for several months (around 2 days a week for 15 weeks). Thank you Ines, thank you Aurèle! Both are geoscientists, so they know all the tools of satellite analysis inside out. They were supervised by Professor Devis Tuia. Ines and Aurèle’s report is a mine of information. It can

In addition to its mission of participative and sustainable reforestation, the arboRise foundation has the statutory objective of “experimenting with natural reforestation methods that enhance biodiversity“. That’s why we asked ourselves how we could use mushrooms to make our trees grow. We’ve known for several years that trees and fungi interact. In a nutshell: Some fungi link up with tree roots via their mycelium to help each other. Trees provide sugar to fungi in exchange for water and mineral salts Trees that benefit from this grow better There are three types of fungi: Saprophytes Saprophytic (or saprophagous) fungi feed on dead or decomposing organic matter. They play an essential role in the decomposition of dead organic matter, such as leaves, branches and plant debris. By breaking down complex organic matter into simpler compounds, they release nutrients into the soil. Although direct interactions between saprophytic fungi and mycorrhizal fungi are limited,

Seed harvesting began in the villages in the second group (you’ll recall that the 26 villages are divided into three groups corresponding to the ripening period of the trees: the first group of villages harvests seeds from trees ripening in January-February, the second group harvests seeds from trees ripening in March-April and the third group harvests seeds from trees ripening in May-June). The harvesting technique differs depending on the tree species. Here, on the Uapaca Somon, the women use long, light bamboos at the end of which they attach blades to pluck the clusters of seeds from the top of the tree. For other species, the women collect the seeds that have fallen to the ground: All the seed families have been fitted with large tarpaulins to make it easier to collect the seeds (see news item ‘Equipment for the families’). In these images, the harvesters are not using them.

The Guinean families involved in the project are extremely poor. They lack clothes and tools, even for their usual farming activities. In the first year of the project, the participants had asked for a distinctive sign that they belonged to the project, which we provided, although we were sceptical about its real usefulness. In the second year, we provided tarpaulins for the seed families and boots for the field families: The large ARBORISE-GUIDRE tarpaulins are placed under the seed tree to collect the seeds, for the duration of the harvest phase. The tarpaulin makes the seeds clearly visible and facilitates harvesting. Above all, it protects against animals that might hide in the grass or branches under the trees. It also protects against abrasions caused by thorny grasses. ARBORISE-GUIDRE boots protect the lower legs of land families as they move around and work on sowing, clearing and establishing protective strips. In