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Ambitious tree growing scheme yields dividends
2006-09-10 09:24:35
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
The Institute for Environmental Innovation (I4EI) has organised over 25,000 subsistence farmers in Tanzania and three other countries to grow over 10 million trees in the last six years in a bid to address the challenges of planet Earth carbonisation. Over 2.5 million of the trees are alive today.
Speaking to participants in a meeting organised by I4EI in Tulsa, Oklahoma, US yesterday, Sir Jayantilal Andy Chande, who is the institute’s current chairman, said the project known as the International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST), started with just 40 groups of farmers in the central Tanzanian regions of Morogoro and Dodoma, but the number has grown to over 2,000.
’’I have watched TIST grow from 40 small groups in Tanzania, to over 2,000 small groups in four countries.
TIST small group members have planted over 10 million trees, of which over 2.5 million trees are alive today,’’ he told a congregation of International Rotary Club youth.
He mentioned other countries where farmers’ groups have been organised by TIST under 14EI funding as Kenya, Uganda and India.
Chande, said in a speech, a copy of which was e-mailed to the Sunday Observer, that the participants in the programme plan to plant 20 million additional trees in order to sequester over 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020.
Besides tree planting, he said the farmers are taking actions to combat the cycle of poverty, deforestation and environmental degradation.
Chande, who is also a staunch member of the Rotary Club International, said learning from their successes and failures and using best practices developed in the past six years, I4EI and another organisation known as Clean Air Action, plan to expand the TIST program to five other countries every year, in order to double the planted acreage.
The 14EI, a non-profit foundation, was established in 2001 to provide funding for US and international efforts to renew the environment, create food surplus and improve the health and well being of those at the base of the world economic pyramid, he explained.
The institute, in partnership with Clean Air Action Corporation, ’’focuses on empowering small groups of men and women to take actions that they find to be essential and that demonstrate measurable results,’’ he said.
He added that those involved with I4EI find resources and implement programmes that respond to the needs of the communities they serve.
Chande, an acclaimed Knight and the East African Freemasons District Master General, mentioned other organisations in which I4EI was getting assistance from as Dow Chemical Company Foundation, USAID Global Development Alliance, Restore UK, Berkeley Reforestation Trust of UK and individual donors from those countries.
’’Relying on a strong local network of small groups, I4EI has managed to scale-up TIST activities in Central Tanzania successfully, and replicate its work in southern India, central Kenya and south west Uganda, all of which are categorized in the Kyoto Protocol as Non-Annex 1 countries,’’ he said.
Explaining what the TIST participants do in the programme, he said they encourage subsistence farmers living in the areas to organize themselves and take action to reverse the damage that environmental degradation is causing in their lives.
He proceeded to say that they do this in a number of ways, including collecting seeds from the trees that still exist in the area, raise seedlings, and planting them in and around their villages.
Besides, they take care of them through the first dry season to the period when they begin to provide shade, windbreaks, soil stabilisation, food, nuts, fertiliser and other benefits, he said.
Chande, who is also a prominent business person, said many of them adopt sustainable and improved agricultural practices that allow them to double crop yields in the first year and get involved in other community activities, including compassionate care for HIV/Aids victims and orphans.
He told more than 1,000 participants that some of the farmers choose to build fuel-efficient stoves that reduce the amount of firewood necessary for cooking.
He said the carbon sequestered by the TIST trees creates a ’’virtual’’ cash crop for the farmers who are often isolated from agricultural or forestry markets.
’’In almost every location where TIST operates, people are living below the subsistence level; that is, in poverty incomprehensible to many of us.
Their daily lives are characterized by scarcity of food, water, cooking fuel, medicine, and often education opportunities, and almost always employment opportunities’’he said.
Summarising TIST programme activities, he said the organisation ’’now sees its mission as to educate, encourage, empower, and organize the small groups so that they are able to move themselves from scarcity to a life of sufficiency — in food, fuel wood, water, education and employment’’
Explaining the damage done by carbonisation, he said about 10,000 years ago 15.2 billion acres (6.2 billion ha) of the earth surface was covered by tropical forests of which at the moment, one third has been destroyed.
Until 1982, a total of 27.9 million acres of tropical forests had been cleared, he concluded.
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