From conflict to canopy

OLA AFRICA is an NGO established in 2010 that is working to promote communities’ development, biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and help vulnerable population especially youth, women and people with disabilities to be more resilient to climate change. Our organization is rooted in area under the threat of environmental degradation and climate change. In Benin, the decrease of soil fertility and, loss of biodiversity and urbanization, hinder rural livelihoods prosperity and ecosystem health. Nearly 43,393km2 of land, or 37,36% of the national territory (UNCCD, 2022) is moderately or severely degraded.

At OLA AFRICA NGO, we believe that restoring degraded ecosystems should start from environmental education and strengthening communities. That’s the reason why we closely work with local populations to reestablish the degraded landscape on the principle of leave no one behind.

Our greening schools’ initiatives through living fence come from this vision. We base our activities on the fact that school are not only places of learning but they are also somewhere that environmental awareness can be raised. During the first phase of our school greening activities, we supported tree planting and environmental education efforts to create a greener and healthier learning environment.

However, our experience revealed an important challenge.

During our activities, we encountered territorial tensions between surrounding communities and the authorities of the school regarding the ownership of the land and the use rights. This has kept our mind on a crucial lesson: restoration activities cannot occur without involving conflicts.

Instead of seeing this challenge as a setback, we recognized it as something to overcome, an opportunity to improve our approach. The next phase or our project aims to integrate a conflict-sensitive approach into all of our environmental activities. This funding from the Restore Life Awards will help us strengthen our intervention and to pursue the initiative of greening school that we were obliged to stop because of the conflict between schools, local communities and traditional stakeholders. We will work through a participatory mechanism, enable mediation and make sure that restoration planning reflects shared interests and local realities. This funding will also support environmental awareness activities and training for students and communities on practices for a sustainable environment.

We are not simply greening school and planting trees. By combining restoration with conflict-sensitive approach, our organization seeks to demonstrate that ecological restoration can build strong relationships, social cohesion and lasting peace.

We are not simply greening school and planting trees in this project, but we are planting dialogue and greener future for Northern Benin.