. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Wanjira Mathai, Grist

When world leaders gathered in Paris to open negotiations for a pivotal international climate agreement, I was happy to see so many heads of state reaffirm the central role of trees and forest landscape restoration in fighting and adapting to climate change. As an African woman and the daughter of Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement, the restoration agenda is very close to me. The movement my mother established has been mobilizing communities for close to 40 years to restore their landscapes by planting trees for food, for fuel, and to bring barren land back to productive life.

Planting a tree in Kenya photo: USAID Kenya

Restoration is also Africa’s best chance to protect itself from climate change. Even though the continent as a whole has contributed minimally to the global climate change problem, Africans will be among those most affected.

By mid-century, Africa’s population is expected to nearly double — from 1.1 billion to 2 billion — pushing the demand for already scarce resources of soil and water. Nearly three-quarters of all drylands in Africa — 1 billion hectares (3.86 million square miles) — are affected by desertification, while a quarter of African agricultural land is seriously damaged, costing an average of 3 percent of GDP each year due to the loss of soil and nutrients on farmland. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly half the population, 47 percent, earns less than $1.25 a day.

Restoration holds the potential to shield us from those dangers while also providing a wide range of benefits: trees as a source of energy; trees as a source of nutritious food; trees to bind the soil so that agriculture thrives; trees that make our landscapes beautiful. And especially in the developing world, restoring landscapes and planting trees is something we can do right away — we have boots on the ground! By investing in this amazing opportunity, we can tackle a suite of problems with one useful tool.

A new movement called AFR100 — the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative — is poised to take advantage of this opportune moment. This new pan-African, country-led effort aims to restore 100 million hectares (386,000 square miles) of degraded and deforested landscapes in Africa by 2030. It’s an ambitious goal, but within reach — at the initiative’s launch in Paris during COP21, African countries committed to restore more than 30 million hectares (116,000 square miles), an area larger than the nation of Gabon or the United Kingdom. And AFR100 partners are earmarking more than $1 billion in development finance and $600 million in private sector investment to support restoration activities.

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When you cultivate plants, do you culivate peace?

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AFR100 builds on global commitments for landscape restoration, specifically the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests. It is also inspired by programs such as Initiative 20×20, which focuses on landscape restoration in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are proud to contribute so substantially to this global movement, as restoration is both in our own self-interest and benefits the whole world.

I get energized by the landscape restoration movement in its power to address so many issues simultaneously — health, environment, energy security, and empowerment of women — in a way few other interventions can. Restoration can be especially powerful when paired with other solutions like clean cook stoves and lighting, which I also advocate as director of the Women’s Entrepreneurship in Renewables (wPower) Hub at the Wangari Maathai Institute, where we spotlight and support the important role women play in their communities.

The challenges are great, but so are the opportunities. More than 700 million hectares of land are ripe for restoration in Africa, according to analysis by World Resources Institute and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). These lands are diverse, offering the potential to both restore natural forests and wooded landscapes and also increase the density of trees in highly populated landscapes to help farmers and protect watersheds.

At the opening ceremonies at COP21, many African leaders called for more climate action from the developed world, and that is appropriate. There are a handful of countries we know are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions, and this is going to cause catastrophic suffering in Africa. We must then call upon the developed countries to play their part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and finance mitigation and adaptation activities like restoration in other parts of the world.

We didn’t choose this challenge. But we also can’t afford to wait for others to take action. We have a huge responsibility to mitigate and adapt for our own sake and the sake of our children, because a world of extreme climate change is grim for us all. We have to be diligent in our advocacy for climate justice, but at the same time, we cannot be asleep. We have to put the measures in place in our own countries that will protect our people from the climate crisis. Planting or nurturing a tree seedling in African soil is a good place to start.

(Thank you to Janet Hudgins, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Simone Adler and Beverly Bell, for Other Worlds

Mariama Sonko is a farmer and organizer in Casamance, Senegal. She is the National Coordinator of We Are the Solution, a campaign for food sovereignty led by rural women in West Africa.

Mariama Sonko, third from right, with a women farmers’ organization.
Photo courtesy of Fahamu.

Traditional, small-holder peasant agriculture is done by women. Women are the ones who save the seeds – the soul of the peasant population. This is to honor what women have inherited from their ancestors: the conservation of seeds as part of their knowledge to care for the whole family and nourish their communities.

The green revolution introduced GMOs in Africa. Technicians and researchers come to tell our producers about agriculture from the outside. They tell us that these modern varieties of [GMO] seeds are going to increase our yield. So we will produce a lot, fill up our stores – but soon we will be sick and in the cemeteries. Isn’t it better to grow less, eat well, have good health, live a long life, and pay attention to the generations to come? We reject agriculture that pollutes with chemicals, pesticides, GMOs.

Achieving our goals is a difficult struggle because we have few resources fighting against multinational corporations who have a lot of money. But development in Africa can’t take place on the backs of Africans, and Africa can’t develop without looking ahead for the children.

We Are the Solution is a campaign in West Africa led by rural women from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana and Guinea, though we are a campaign of both women and men. Our vision is to truly promote ancestral knowledge and put pressure on our government to take seriously the preservation of our peasant agriculture.

The campaign has three objectives. First is the use and promotion of traditional knowledge transmitted from generation to generation, which supports food sovereignty and the preservation of peasant seeds. The second objective is to restore national policies favorable to agroecological peasant farming. And the third objective is the promotion of African agricultural production.

Women, Land, and Agriculture

In the agricultural sphere, development rests in the hands of the women, and their role is being proven repeatedly. We Are the Solution raises awareness and consciousness, key to changing the mentality of the people, on the importance of women in family farming and agricultural production.

Women are the primary workers of the land and the majority of the workforce in agriculture, involved in every step of agricultural production: in the fields, 70% of African agriculture is done by women; in conservation, women are the ones making efforts to conserve the native seeds; in animal husbandry; in food processing; in marketing; in selling food at the local level; and as consumers.

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What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

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In Africa, it’s said that land belongs to men as the heads of household. If women can’t access land, don’t have control of that land, or don’t own land, there is a problem. We are campaigning for women to have land ownership, and trying to raise this consciousness among men.

At the national level in Senegal, there’s a new law in effect that states that all citizens have the right to own land. But in practice, we still have the tradition. These women, most of whom are illiterate and rural, are socialized to believe that this longstanding culture can’t be changed. Our job is to [help them] understand they have the same rights as men, and that women owning land contributes to the well-being of the family and assures that they are fed.

At the local level, some women have risen up and demanded that land be put in their names, and now they are land-owners. Women’s associations have acquired blocks of land of up to one or two hectares, but frankly, there’s not much they can produce on that. To develop agriculture we need to cultivate larger plots or install irrigation, but this isn’t permitted because women don’t have a say in land use. There is idle land available and not enough men to work it all, yet they don’t want to turn it over to women. So the effort of raising awareness and advocacy goes on.

Agroecology, Sacred Seeds, and Food Sovereignty

Women peasant organizations are leading the movement for seed and food sovereignty. We should eat what we produce and produce what we eat.

Agroecology protects all living things and treats nature as sacred. Our seeds are ancient, and each is tied to a certain place. The traditional practice of seed selection preserves the environment and sustains biodiversity, while using our resources which are affordable and accessible. These seeds don’t need any modification.

We are seeing new diseases due to the diet arising from everything that is imported, and as a result of underestimating the value of traditional dishes of grains and vegetables.

Though many have gone to chemical agriculture, our movement has identified several traditional practices that we’re sharing with our sisters and brothers. We Are the Solution organizes workshops, forums, and community radio broadcasts to bring our message down to the popular, rural level and inform the grassroots about the advantages of traditional agroecological or peasant agriculture.

In Casamance [a region of Senegal], We Are the Solution has established a platform of 100 grassroots associations. We now have a model farm field and a store for marketing our family farm products from various kinds of production and hand-tool farming. The store is there to help us promote ecologically produced products produced by women. We are also trying to organize a forum on local consumption.

Overall, women are taking leadership roles in the countries in which We Are the Solution is active, promoting agroecology and seed and food sovereignty as the only viable system for the long-term. This way we can have healthy lives and protect the environment.

This is the first article in a 7-part series which features interviews with grassroots African leaders working for seed and food sovereignty, the decolonization of Africa’s food system, and the preservation of traditional farming practices. This series is made possible with support from New Field Foundation and Grassroots International. Many thanks to Stephen Bartlett for translation of the interview.