A simple way to bring trees to Africa
30 Oct 2008
By World Vision staff
Farmer-managed natural regeneration is a reforestation technique that empowers farmers to reforest their land in a way that benefits them, using plants native to their area.
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Under the advice of World Vision, Hassan Maiwassa, centre, tends to 70 acacia on his land, which provide wood and income to his family.
Photo by Ann Birch.
©2008 World Vision International |
Sometimes the simplest ideas have an enormous impact.
Tony Rinaudo’s idea first came in 1983 when he was a missionary with Serving in Mission in Niger.
He and others had been encouraging villagers to grow trees using traditional reforestation techniques, which involved raising trees in a nursery and transplanting them. This met with little success in Niger’s harsh environment.
“One day I was driving to the villages and I was very frustrated,” he says. “I stopped the car and looked out across the barren field. I prayed, ‘Lord, we’ve destroyed the beautiful creation you’ve given us. Forgive us.’ And I asked God for guidance.
“Then I noticed something. Looking out across what I thought was desert there were all these little shrubs that I had seen before but hadn’t known what they were.
“Upon closer inspection, I realised that they were the stumps of felled trees. Being adapted to the harsh environment, the trees were able to re-sprout from the roots. I realised that we need never plant a tree again.
“I learned that, if allowed to, these trees would re-grow and were hardy enough not to require constant protection and watering. All we had to do was to convince the farmers to prune these sprouts and let them grow, and that was the battle,” he said.
Tony began his reforestation efforts anew with the help of a dozen pioneering farmers, who suffered immense ridicule in their villages. There was a deep-seated fear that trees would reduce crop yields.
During the 1984 famine, he worked with dozens of communities to introduce this method, resulting in 500,000 new trees. Most of the villagers cut the trees down as soon as the programme ended.
The villagers who kept their trees eventually proved to their neighbours that these trees help increase crop yields and become sources of firewood, fodder and income.
In 20 years, the method has spread to over 5 million hectares in Niger and has become standard practice.
Rinaudo joined World Vision in 1999.
“In my 17 years in West Africa, I felt I had learned a lot about reforestation and principles of development and that World Vision had a bigger platform for learning and for promotion of these ideas. ”
Rinaudo is now working with World Vision and spreading the reforestation technique across Africa.
“The potential is just astounding,” says Rinaudo. “People are now utilizing land that was so degraded that it had become wasteland.”
There is still work to be done. “For me it’s been absolutely astounding that something so simple and so cheap is not replicated around the world.
“I think that because it’s so simple, people just don’t get it.” However, within World Vision there is a groundswell of adoption.
Since 2007, World Vision has been a partner in the Sahel Re-greening Initiative, a coalition of NGOs creating awareness and promoting FMNR in Senegal, Mali, Burkina Fasso and Niger. World Vision also has FMNR projects in Chad and Ethiopia.
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