Strategy
Each strand of our current 15-year Community Forestry Livelihoods programme in West Africa - forestry, money, food and health - forms a vital piece of a jigsaw, each building on and reinforcing the other. The first phase of this programme began in 2003. This identified the best ways of supporting villagers to generate income from trees. The second and current phase continues this and our forestry work. Our money, food and medicine strands will encourage the growth and protection of trees and better farming, which is what our forestry work is all about. The more that is invested in the sustainable management of trees the greater the long-term returns will be for the villagers. This will increase the incentive to continue the work, which strengthens their resilience to the effects of climate change.
As one farmer put it, “without trees, we have no life”. That's why helping communities to set up tree nurseries, protect and manage trees and improve crop production (through soil and water conservation and integrating trees into farming), is core to what we do. We are now helping villagers interpret legislative changes, arising from government decentralisation in West Africa, to secure their rights, access to and control over forests and trees. We call this work ‘Trees for Change' . Money: Ongoing Our Village Tree Enterprise work helps villagers make money from the things that grow on trees. Support is given to identify the most viable tree products to develop for urban and regional markets. TREE AID is helping village groups to produce business plans and link them up with further training, service suppliers, technical support and financing. Producer associations will be established to share knowledge and resources and work collectively to develop products, secure markets and maintain and develop demand for tree products. Food: Ongoing from 2008 The regions in which we work are stalked by famine and drought. Through tree foods TREE AID is strengthen existing ‘emergency relief', using local solutions to cope with drought and stave off hunger. We are developing local knowledge about how tree foods can help plug nutritional gaps. In addition, TREE AID is helping to develop better preservation and storage of tree foods to tide people over the lean months, and even have enough left over to sell, using the income to buy other food. Health: starting 2011 For most villagers conventional medicines are too expensive or unavailable. Instead knowledge of tree remedies and recipes are passed down from one generation to the next. There is strong demand in cities for some traditional medicines, which are sometimes preferred to Western medicine. Over the coming years we will be exploring the potential for supporting more effective and safe use of tree and forest medicines.
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