Mount Cameroon forest restoration and organic farming

Based on UN related reports and the UNCCD, forest and land degradation in Cameroon is accelerating at a very fast rate, driven by agricultural pressure and climate change with Specific  and significant areas in the Southwest Region facing forest loss and desertification.

Imagine a whole community at Mt Cameroon's foot, relying on forest resources like animal hunting, timber exploitation, and unsustainable farming for decades now. Middlemen exacerbate the issue by offering low rates. This dependence leads to environmental degradation, food insecurity, and poverty as inhabitants lack knowledge of conservation. In the realm of immediate action, the ongoing civil unrest in Cameroon began.

Since the civil unrest showed up, it added and brought to the fore the lack of social protection measures for the poor rural inhabitants who are at the mercy of the economy’s downturn. Demand for food, education and financial support has increased so much in the past few years and many are using any opportunities to make ends meet. The challenges faced by these inhabitants and internally displaced persons include high levels of neglect, malnutrition, infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and illiteracy. Many of the young girls are uneducated and cannot be employed because they lack basic skills, so they depend on donations and men in our community.

The landscape we at Bonavada community, along the foot of mount Cameroon use to be surrounded by rich biodiversity. But now, the landscape is unproductive in many areas, fragmented, erosion prone, and poverty as inhabitants, hunters; timber operators and small older farmers lack knowledge of conservation. Fresh water used to flow generously through streams, in this landscape, sustaining crops but as climate change, deforestation and human activity tightened its grip, the once-reliable stream began to dry up seasonally, leaving the area with seasonal streams.

The drivers of land degradation and current state of this landscape is not just a story for me but my lived experience as I grew up in this community and experience the act of depleting the natural environment and the devastating effects of biodiversity loss towards our ecosystem. Restoring this landscape means bringing hopes, dignity, as this landscape is also our cultural and communal identity.

My solution will take place in the Bonavada community; this community is located in the Southwest Region of Cameroon precisely in Buea at the foot of mount Cameroon. This community is a rural settlement which comprises of mainly the indigenes (bakwerians) even though due to the availability of fertile soils and natural resources it has attracted other inhabitants mainly from the northwest. The inhabitants of this locality are primarily concerned with agricultural activities and timber exploitation this community equally faces a wide range of other related problems ranging from bad roads and water scarcity. The Bonavada community has a very bad roads connectivity which is seasonal and accessible mainly to big vehicles which are more specialized in transporting wood logs. Also, the inhabitants fetch   their drinking water from a nearby distance village seasonal stream (Bwitingi) which is natural.

Our youth led solution titled “Resilience and Restoration along the foot of mount Cameroon” aims to raise awareness, train locals, eco-villains, youths and women on organic farming, food processing and establish tree nurseries to promote sustainable practices and tree planting.

Our interactive life skill training sessions will filled with both outdoors and indoors activities to enable beneficiaries acquire new skills and knowledge on organic gardening, local food processing, with an intensive trees nursery site establishment and planting of both fruit and  non-fruits trees which have economical values. Trainings on food-products like pasta and bread made of locally starched containing vegetables such as Cassava, potatoes, coco yams, Jackfruits, and plantain all grown using very little spaces and low energy. The outdoor sessions includes practical demonstrations, distribution of farming tools, and active involvement at the nursery sites. This is to ensure that the locals don’t just nurse and plant trees but acquire economic empowerment that will divert their interest away from their long-term reliance on mountain forest and its biodiversity.

Beside from just using organic farming and food transformation as an environmental peace building tool,   to prevent most of the youths and girls to be recruited by the rebels and reduce their dependency on donation, men, forest ecosystem, our solution  address issues towards hunger, the civil unrest in Cameroon as well as to promote environmental peace. Empowering these beneficiaries, our solution is able to create a mindset shift from the negative experiences our children and youths have gone through ever since this crisis started and it will give them an opportunity to start all over again and reduce reliance on forest ecosystem.

Our youth led solution directly uses the landscape approach by combining and integrating ecological, social and economic restoration. We directly tackle land use needs, forestry, food systems, watershed protection and farming while collaborating and involving traditional leaders, youths, women and schools. Some of these stakeholders were drivers of land degradation and deforestation but will now become part of the solution.

Upon the successful implementation of our youth led community restoration initiative, titled Resilience and Restoration at the foot of Mount Cameroon, I hope to uncover 3 key learning questions throughout the over 20months of our implementation.

Firstly, I hope to uncover how we as youths can combine sustainable livelihood activities with environmental restoration in rural communities why reducing the reliance and dependency on mountain biodiversity.

Also, I want to discover what strategies are best to empower young people, Eco-villains and women in rural communities to better lead environmental restoration efforts and attain behavioral change.

Lastly, I want to know and uncover the changes I could make to my youth led community intervention in order to scale it in similar context and better impact the lives of beneficiaries. 

Through our youth led community intervention, we aim to improve our skills and learn how to better develop and design scalable youth led and community owned initiatives that will bring together socio-economic benefits and resilience with environmental restoration efforts. While identifying sustainable practical approaches that can also be implemented  in similar landscape and across the globe.

In the next 15 to 20 months, after receiving funding we expect to have directly work alongside at least 500 of our fellow indigenous farming and timber exploiters in this community and enable them gained knowledge on food transformation and the importance of environmental peace so that their attentions are turned away from the forest and consequently leading to forest loss reduction. 

We expect to have directly reduce the rate of deforestation in our community especially as the direct beneficiaries would join us to raise awareness around climate change, the effects of deforestation, and through community-based campaigns and setting up about 10 mini tree nurseries, then effectively transplant over 5000 of these trees with the goal to regenerate our forests, farmlands. Through this component of our grassroots forest conservation program, indigenous tree species, fruit trees, and trees valued traditionally for medicinal purposes are planted.

We would be able to also experience an increase in the consumption of organic foods as we would educate and prove how dangerous the use of chemicals are to agriculture, the environments and to man’s health. We intend to see our direct beneficiaries try to cultivate their farms in the next coming year avoiding the over use of any sort of chemical fertilizers.

8- Describe the strategies you will use to monitor the progress of your project and to evaluate its success. 200 word.

If our youth led solution is been funded, we intend to see that our measured success would have advancement in the following outputs, outcomes and impacts which will be realized in the next 20  months;

Be able to provide an interactive environment for over 500 eco-villains, youths and marginalized women in our rural community and make sure that 90% of them successfully complete the training.

Our project would be considered successful if about 90% of the participants demonstrate that they master the skills at the end of the training. They would also acquire leadership skills, build on their confidence and improve on their self-esteem.

We would be using surveys through questionnaires to have feedbacks and also to assess the perception of diversity, inclusiveness, and equality among beneficiaries and team members. And if in a scale of 0 to 10 rating we have 80% of the feedback be above a score of 7, then our goal is achieved.

We will continue with long term tracking of post-project activities of the beneficiaries to make sure that they secure employment or engage in sustainable practices related to food transformation organic farming and tree planting. If we have 70% of them continue to engage themselves, then our project could be considered a success.

If we are able to train over 700 smallholder farmers, eco-villains, and youths, then establish at least 4 community tree nurseries and  successful plant over 17,000 trees as well as encouraged the formation of four local forest and wildlife conservation groups, which will helped safeguard over 20,000 indigenous and medicinal trees, then our project will be considered successful.

Our youth led initiative flips the script as it directly uses the landscape approach by combining and integrating ecological, social and economic restoration. We directly tackle land use needs, forestry, food systems, watershed protection and farming while collaborating and involving traditional leaders, internally displace and marginalized youths and women. Some of these stakeholders are the drivers of land degradation and deforestation in the community motivated by the ongoing civil unrest, but through our Resilience and Restoration intervention, they will now be part of the solution.

We further flip the script in that; we are effectively allowing Diversity, Inclusiveness and Equality amongst our beneficiaries. We make sure that our project outcome allows our team members and beneficiaries to learn new skills and effectively utilize their talents and meet our project’s identified goals.

Our youth led solution don’t just raises awareness, train locals in organic farming, food processing and establish tree nurseries to promote sustainable practices  but we merge forestry, food innovation, and circular economy practices into one grassroots movement to foster resilience and restoration. We don’t just plant trees we transform mindsets. It’s not charity its peace and justice driven by the very communities most impacted. Our goal isn’t just resilience; it’s regeneration at scale.

Every crisis can function as a springboard for opportunities. The world became a global village. The consequences of globalization are many. Consumer goods are transported from country to country. Food becomes richer and more diverse. The dark side: Dependency. Since the Ukraine war broke out, many African countries and especially our indigenous people in interior villages in Cameroon are experiencing food insecurity be it directly or indirectly linked to climate change. For example, in my country, Cameroon, common food like pasta and bread made from wheat is not available anymore. Our work is not just champion environmental peace but to inspire and pass on our advance ideas to the indigenous people in related context so as to enable them to start thinking locally, environmental friendly and pushing them into the creation of their own personal organic food gardens, production and transformation of their locally harvested food stuffs and also preserving them naturally using sunlight in areas where they can’t afford refrigerators

In the initial stage, the project will be sustained by donor funds. However, after the implementation or in the long run the project will finance itself. Sustainability by ensuring that our beneficiaries would be able to continue what they learn even after the project period is passed either by continuing to sustaining and run their food gardens even when we are not there. We are at the same time going to teach additional skills like seed multiplication, preservation, creating seed banks, etc. This will also not only help them continue to sustain and replicate the project, it will also keep on improving on their health and availability of food, it would also reduce their economy dependency on donations. With the extra skills that they would be learning in other sessions. The fruit trees they will plant will be as a source of income and employment to some of the adolescent youths, farmers and eco-villains.