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Effective participation of indigenous people, local communities and women in restoring degraded land is one of the three main principles of the Action Plan on Ecosystem Restoration that the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity adopted at their recent Conference in Cancun, Mexico. In Burkino Faso the NGO tiipaalga has worked with farmers to restore degraded land. Its director, Mr Alain Traoré, talks to Marlene Elias and Barbara Vinceti.
The Burkinabe association tiipaalga (meaning 'new tree') has worked with the country's farmers for over a decade to help them bring their degraded lands back to life. The organisation's aim is to help improve ecosystems for the purpose of improving the well-being of local households.
The organisation considers - and calls - farmers its partners. Mr Alain Traoré shares insights from his long-term efforts in fostering farmerled restoration initiatives in Burkina Faso.
Q: What is tiipaalga's approach in supporting farmers?
A: Our main approach is assisted natural regeneration, which is a low-cost forest restoration method aimed at accelerating growth of existing natural regeneration by removing competition from weeds and other disturbances and creating a more favourable microenvironment for growth. In some cases, if natural regeneration is not sufficient, planting of valuable species to supplement the existing tree populations (enrichment planting) can be carried out.
While we support planting trees, we recommend farmers only plant in small numbers, to allow them to maintain the trees. There is no point in planting one million trees which we cannot tend. It's better to plant 10 trees per year and in 50 years we will have all we want. We want our partners [farmers] to be sure to be able to care for their trees so they can bring life; as our slogan says: "a tree for life".
In addition to promoting tree regrowth, we focus on avoiding further decline of trees through the overexploitation of fuelwood by promoting the adoption of improved cook stoves. In our country, 80 to 90 per cent of households still use fuelwood for cooking.
We are not here to bring high technologies to farmers. We want them to work with the tools they know. The innovations should come from them. We do not bring all the solutions. We do not focus on...