RESILIENT WEST AFRICA Produced by: West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Executive Producer: Edudzi Nyomi Stories by: David Goodman Technical Support:Â Nouhou Ndam Maps: Kofi Panyin Yarboi Editors: Stephen Kelleher, Chaz Kyser, Edudzi Nyomi Photographers: David Goodman, Darius Barrolle Designer: Edudzi Nyomi
Cover picture: Walking a transect in Sapo National Park, Liberia. Photo by David Goodman
This magazine is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this magazine are the sole responsibility of its authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States government.
West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program Contacts: Stephen Kelleher Stephen.Kelleher@wabicc.org Chief of Party
Nouhou Ndam Nouhou.Ndam@wabicc.org Forestry and Landscape Coordinator
ABOUT ABOUT WA BiCC The West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program is a 5-year learning program funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Although regional in scope, WA BiCC works in targeted geographical areas, or ‘‘Learning Landscapes," to generate knowledge that informs local, national, and regional practices addressing critical climate change and biodiversity challenges in West Africa. By working with core regional partners—the Economic Community of West African States, the Mano River Union, and the Abidjan Convention —alongside national and sub-national institutions and local communities, WA BiCC strives to increase the capacity of institutions at all levels to achieve its three core goals: combating wildlife trafficking; increasing coastal resilience to climate change; and reducing deforestation, forest degradation, and biodiversity loss.
ABOUT THE WRITER David Goodman is a veteran international journalist and the bestselling author of a dozen books. For these and other WA BiCC stories, he traveled extensively throughout West Africa to highlight the successes and challenges faced in protecting biodiversity and confronting the many dimensions of climate change.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The stories told in these pages are the result of a leap of faith. The work of international development is typically chronicled in reports and working papers. But Vaneska Litz, Senior Associate at Tetra Tech, and Stephen Kelleher, Chief of Party for the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) Program, recognized that there is a richer narrative emerging out of the work of WA BiCC: the unsung efforts of ordinary West Africans who are making a difference for their communities and the world. They took a chance that this would be a story worth telling. I am grateful to Vaneska and Stephen for valuing these stories and inviting me to tell them. My journeys in Sierra Leone and Liberia were greatly enriched by the deep knowledge, patience, and humor of my colleagues who joined me. In Sierra Leone, thanks to Fatmata Kata, Moses Zombo, Zebedee Njisuh, Kofi Panyin, and Alhaji Jalloh. In Liberia, my gratitude to Darius Barrolle, Kumeh Assaf, and Othello Weltee. They were all immensely helpful guides and great travel partners over many days on the road. A special thanks to Nouhou Ndam, WA BiCC’s Forestry and Landscape Coordinator. Nouhou was my partner and guide on several trips in West Africa. His knowledge of the landscape, relationships with the community, and especially his ability to laugh through every travel misadventure, made these journeys both enjoyable and enlightening. Finally, thanks to Chaz Kyser and Edudzi Nyomi of WA BiCC for transforming these words and images into a compelling publication.
— David Goodman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................1 HONEY MONEY...............................................................................................2 GUARDIANS OF THE FOREST.......................................................................9 THE HUNTER..................................................................................................16 GOLD MINING: THE ENVIRONMENTAL & HUMAN COSTS...................20 PROTECTING LIBERIA THROUGH DRAMA & LAUGHTER......................25 SAVING MONEY & THE RAINFOREST IN SIERRA LEONE........................29 HELPING PEOPLE & MANGROVES ON SIERRA LEONE'S COAST...........34
INTRODUCTION Mention Liberia and Sierra Leone, and two things come to mind, neither of them good: war and Ebola. I first visited Liberia in the early 2000s to report on the reintegration of child soldiers, a notorious feature of its 14-year-long civil war. “I want to be born again as a child,” a young Liberian ex-combatant told me, a plaintive plea to reclaim his innocence and forge a new future out of the ruins of conflict. Neighboring Sierra Leone, which emerged from an 11-year-long civil war in 2002, was similarly shattered. After years of rebuilding, both countries endured another blow from 2014 to 2015, when the Ebola epidemic ravaged the region, killing over 11,000 people in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. When I visit Liberia and Sierra Leone today, the legacy of their challenges is evident in the endemic poverty. But the people I meet are resilient and resourceful. They are determined to build a brighter future. This is essential as they confront another daunting challenge: climate change. At the heart of the story of climate change are people: those who are directly impacted and the many who are trying to make a difference. That is the story that I traveled to West Africa to explore, at the invitation of the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program, a 5-year project funded by USAID to address critical climate change and biodiversity challenges in the region. Africans are least responsible for climate change—West Africa accounts for just 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, a pittance compared with China (28%) and the United States (14%)—but it is acutely affected by its impacts. West Africa is on the frontline of the climate crisis—and holds keys to solutions. This region is home to the largest block of the remaining Upper Guinean Forest, a biodiversity hotspot that is considered of global conservation significance. Together with the Amazon rainforest, these vast forests play a critical role in absorbing carbon, reducing temperature, and mitigating climate change impacts globally and locally. And at a time when the United Nations has declared that “biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history,” West Africa’s forests are home to the richest diversity of species in the world. But this is also one of the most critically fragmented forested regions on Earth, with only about one fifth of its original forest cover remaining intact. Simply put, the fate of the planet is intimately bound with the fate of West Africa’s forests and its people. I visited communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone, where I spoke with farmers grappling with droughts and hunters who are returning empty-handed from once bountiful forests. They are adapting: farmers are starting to abandon slash-and-burn agriculture and implementing more sustainable techniques that don’t destroy the forest. Some are trying new livelihoods, such as beekeeping, which has the dual benefit of being profitable and preserving healthy forests. I met hunters in Liberia who are now educating community members about endangered wildlife and illegal trafficking. And I spoke with women in Sierra Leone who are gaining financial independence as they participate in a village savings and loan program that has enabled them to establish new businesses. The stories of Liberia and Sierra Leone today are no longer about war. They are about fighting poverty, reducing the impact of climate change, and preserving biodiversity. The people I met are working hard to make the world better—one farm, one beehive, one village, and one forest at a time. These are their stories.
— David Goodman 01
Raw honey barrel before bees are strained out. Photo by Darius Barrolle
–ONEY MONEY The tropical stillness is cut by the sound of a low-speed buzzsaw. Or so I think. On closer listen, this is the drone of thousands of buzzing bees. I instinctively tense up. My mind screams danger. To Jenkins Zarweah, the sound of bees is the sound of music. He smiles broadly as bees buzz benignly around us. Given the risk posed by aggressive African honeybees, his delight seems incongruous. He is eager to explain. A few years ago, Zarweah, a 43-year-old father of four, was unemployed. “I would just play football and chat with my friends,” recounts the gregarious man in a white polo shirt and worn work pants. We are standing in a cavernous room full of plastic drums, each of which holds 18 gallons of honey. This is the honey collection facility for Liberia Pure Honey (LPH) located in Ganta, Liberia, on the Guinea border. LPH is a business project of the Liberia-based Universal Outreach Foundation (UOF), a subcontractor of Wild Chimpanzee Foundation and the West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change program. Zarweah was looking for a way to support his family. A friend suggested beekeeping. Zarweah was intrigued. He heard that UOF offered beekeeper training, two starter beehives and other equipment, and a guaranteed market for honey, for which LPH pays US$17.50 per gallon. Each hive can yield 3 to 5 gallons of honey. Zarweah took a chance and invested in a few hives. The honey—and money—started to flow.
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Honey Money
Jenkins Zarweah processing honey at Liberia Pure Honey collection center, Ganta, Liberia. Photo by Darius Barrolle
TOWARD A SWEETER FUTURE
Liberians are striving for a brighter future. The troubled West African nation of 5 million people has endured dual calamities: In 2003, Liberia ended 14 years of civil war that killed 150,000–200,000 people and displaced roughly half of the population. Liberia held democratic elections in 2005 and has had stable governments ever since. But in 2014–2016, the Ebola epidemic tore through the countryside, infecting 10,700 Liberians and killing 4,800. These crises have hobbled the country: in 2018, Liberia ranked 181 out of 189 on the UN Human Development Index. Liberians are hungry for opportunities to rebuild their lives. That’s where honey comes in. Honey is not new in Liberia, but commercial beekeeping is. Wild honey has traditionally been gathered by honey hunters who cut down trees, smoke bees out of hives, and gather what they can while enduring bee stings. Wild honey collection is hazardous, yields small benefits, and is environmentally unsustainable, since it involves destroying the very forest that is home to honeybees. According to UOF co-founder Kent Bubbs, there were just a few commercial beekeepers in the country a decade ago. UOF sensed an opportunity: beekeeping could create desperately needed jobs in rural areas. In 2012, UOF provided a $15,000 loan to launch Liberia Pure Honey. Gladys Freeman, a former loan supervisor at Firestone, and beekeeper Cecil Wilson, became co-owners of this social enterprise that considers the environmental, social, and financial impacts of its actions. LPH expanded its offerings in 2017 with a line of coconut oil.
Honey Money
03
William Jones bringing honey to Liberia Pure Honey collection center, Ganta, Liberia. Photo by David Goodman
Just then, a tall, thin man rolls up on a motorbike and stops in front of the honey collection center. The motorbike sags beneath the weight of an 18-gallon barrel filled with honey that is strapped to the back. William Jones introduces himself as a local pastor and beekeeper. Zarweah and Saywah help him to carefully lower the honey barrel to the ground and roll it inside, where the honey is tested to ensure that its water content is below 19 percent. Saywah pulls out a wad of cash, peels off $350, and hands it to Jones. The pastor breaks into a broad smile. “I use the proceeds to help my children and pay their school fees,” explains Jones, who manages 70 hives. He says that many people in his congregation are now beekeepers, and 40 percent of them are women. “There are so many beekeepers here. It is helping people pay rent, buy homes, and expand their farms.” Beekeeping has raised incomes and hopes throughout Liberia. But it faces challenges: honeybees are very sensitive to environmental changes. During the Ebola epidemic, one beekeeper told me that the air was so thick with chlorine fumes that bees abandoned his 70 hives and did not return for a year. Bees are also sensitive to climate change; variations in average temperature and in the duration and intensity of the rainy season affects bee productivity. Pastor Jones also feels that beekeepers should be paid more. UOF founder Kent Bubbs notes that honey sells for $5 to $9 per gallon in neighboring African countries, so LPH’s guarantee of $17.50 per gallon offers Liberia’s beekeepers a generous incentive to expand production and grow the market. UOF is working towards having LPH be certified as organic fair trade, adding further value for the export market. As the market expands, Bubbs says the goal is to return additional money to beekeepers through profit sharing.
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Honey Money
STINGINGLY SWEET Zarweah invites us to join him to collect honey. He hands me and my WA BiCC colleague, Nouhou Ndam, two bright yellow beekeeping suits, protective rubber gloves, and boots. We follow him on his motorbike and stop alongside the forest at a nondescript point on the dirt road. He has seven hives in this area. “This is where we enter,” he says. Nouhou and I don beekeeping suits, making us resemble oversized honeybees. We follow closely behind Zarweah as he plunges into the thick green growth. He swings a cutlass back and forth to hack out a path. We arrive at a wooden box covered by corrugated metal. Bees are buzzing about but appear uninterested in us. Zarweah, covered head to toe in his protective suit, raises a metal can, lights the cardboard inside, and begins pumping smoke into the hive as he gently lifts the metal covering. “You see,” he reassures us, “bees are friendly! Nothing to fear here.” His smile of delight shines through his headnet. Zarweah works patiently, pries up a honeycomb loaded with honey, and drops it into a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Bees swirl around him but are dispersed by the smoke. Nouhou and I stand on opposite sides of the beehive. I stand still, clutching my camera and capturing the scene. Suddenly, the bees swarm me. The buzzing grows louder as bees crawl across my headnet. I assume that I am protected by my protective suit…until I feel the first bee sting on my arm. Then another on my
Jenkins Zarweah harvesting honey. Photo by David Goodman
back. And again on my arm. Then on my leg. Nouhou shouts as bees find a small gap in his headnet and sting his face. I yelp and start to hustle away from the hive. The bees are relentless. An angry swarm follows me as I dash out of the forest. The bees descend on Bryant Saywah and my WA BiCC colleague, Othello, who are both observing. All of us begin swatting at the air. I burst onto the road and begin running; local villagers run and swing cloths over their heads to fend off the onslaught. After about 100 meters, the bees abandon their pursuit. My colleagues and the villagers stop, pant, and count our bee stings. “Those were angry bees!” exclaims Saywah, rubbing his sore arm. “They never sting me like that.” Jenkins Zarweah soon emerges from the forest. He is beaming. He rolls a large barrel loaded with sticky white honeycombs toward the road. He distracts us from our discomfort by offering up a taste of fresh, deep amber Liberian honey. The flavor is complex and rich, even chewable. It is unlike any honey I have ever tasted. The stings fade. The pain is forgotten. In its place, there is only sweetness. Honey Money
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Felicica Kyne and other Ecoguards collecting data in the Grebo-Krahn Forest. Photo by Wild Chimpanzee FoundationÂ
Guardians of the Forest
Grebo-Krahn Community Ecoguard Felicia Kyne. Photo by Darius Barrolle
Felicia Kyne may not look like a superhero. She can’t fly and does not carry magical weapons. But the soft-spoken 23-year-old woman from a remote village in Liberia is on the frontlines of a global battle to preserve biodiversity. Kyne is a Community Ecoguard in Grebo-Krahn National Park (GKNP), a 970-square-kilometer preserve on the border with Côte d’Ivoire. Grebo-Krahn is one of three national parks in Liberia that received official park status on August 22, 2017, after Liberia’s first national park, Sapo National Park, which was created in 1983, and Gola Forest National Park, located on Liberia’s western border with Sierra Leone, that passed into law on September 22, 2016. GKNP is a short distance from Taï National Park (5,264 sq. km) in Côte d’Ivoire and Sapo National Park (1,804 sq. km). Together, the three parks comprise a vast transboundary landscape that is considered a global biodiversity hotspot and the largest tract of contiguous forest left in the entire Upper Guinean Forest ecosystem. But this landscape is threatened by high rates of deforestation, degradation, and poaching.
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Guardians of the Forest
TRAVEL TRIALS We begin our Liberian road trip with an ambitious itinerary and a dollop of hope. As in, we hope we will reach our destination. We know not to count on it given the onset of the heavy seasonal rains and the lack of allweather roads. Just traveling in southeastern Liberia underscores its remoteness—and Liberia’s ongoing challenges. Zwedru, the small city near Grebo-Krahn National Park, is 300 miles from Monrovia, the capital, but it takes about 12 hours to drive there on roads that periodically morph into truck-devouring mud pits. Our veteran driver, Othello, warns us in the morning that we may not reach our destination that afternoon. We slam and lurch in our Land Cruiser through soft, oozing mud and around stuck trucks. We get halfway to Zwedru when Othello breaks the news: we’re not going to make it. As night falls, we are forced to bail out at a hospital guest house.
Rough roads: Truck stuck in the mud on the road to Zwedru, Liberia. Photo by David Goodman
We learn that bridges are out on the road to the communities near Grebo-Krahn National Park where we had planned to travel. A group of Ecoguards agrees to meet us in Zwedru. We meet at the offices of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF), which together with the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program, funds the Community Ecoguards. "Help protect the reserve for future generations." Sign welcoming visitors to Zwedru, Liberia. Photo by David Goodman
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Guardians of the Forest
FROM HUNTER TO ECOGUARD Alphonso Zarley had an improbable journey to becoming a forest protector. He fled the Liberian civil war in the 1990s. Fighting raged with particular intensity around Zwedru and Grand Gedeh County, where up to threequarters of the county’s young people were recruited as combatants. “I was against them bullets and killing people,” Zarley tells me. “I ran to Côte d’Ivoire. But this was my land. I wanted to come back. There’s nothing better than my home.” Zarley, who has a wife and six children, says that upon his return, there was no work. “After war, we don’t have nothing to do so we killed more. I went hunting to support my family.” Zarley would hunt black duikers, monkeys, bush cow (the Liberian name for forest buffalo), and pygmy hippos, which are endangered. “I hunted for eating and for selling. It took care of my needs.” But subsistence hunting has declined as the greater Grebo-Krahn landscape has come under enormous pressure from large-scale agricultural and mining concessions, smallscale farmlands, legal and illegal logging, and hunting for bushmeat. Neighboring Côte d’Ivoire has one of the highest rates of deforestation in West Africa, having lost over 2 million hectares of forest between 2001 and 2014. Liberia has the fourth highest rate of deforestation, with about 715,900 hectares lost during the same period. Zarley knew that the environment was in trouble. When he started hunting in 2001, he could kill five to seven animals per day. By 2010, he was only getting two animals. When he heard that a national park would be created, he was supportive. “I realize that if I kill the animals, my children will never see these things.” He applied for a job with WCF as an Ecoguard.
Grebo-Krahn Community Ecoguard Alphonso Zarley. Photo by David Goodman
“Now,” says the proud Community Ecoguard. “I have another opportunity.” Guardians of the Forest
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A boy reads a roadside mural in Gbarnga, Liberia, that urges, "Protect Liberia's wildlife." Photo by David Goodman
THE CHALLENGE OF CONSERVATION
In exchange for conserving the land, international NGOs and the Liberian government promised road repairs, schools, and clinics to local communities. Those benefits have been slow in coming. Ecoguards are the first to hear the discontent. Preserving land poses a challenge to local people. Traditional activities such as hunting and farming are restricted and can even be penalized. That has led to tension with residents who live near the new national park. In exchange for conserving the land, international NGOs and the Liberian government promised road repairs, schools, and clinics to local communities. Those benefits have been slow in coming. Ecoguards are the first to hear the discontent. The government and NGOs “made a lot of promises,” says Community Ecoguard Sylvester Yeoh. “I tell the community that Wild Chimpanzee Foundation will do more with you if you do your part, which is stopping illegal activity in the park.” The terrible roads are a particular sore point since they impede access to markets, schools, and jobs. Community members say that they are keeping up their end of the bargain, telling Yeoh: “We left the forest. We don’t care [who is fixing the roads]. We just want it done.” Meanwhile, awareness about the importance of conservation is slowly having an impact and changing behaviors. “Before we started as Ecoguards, activities like mining and hunting were rampant,” Kyne tells me. “But we keep doing awareness-raising and it has reduced these activities.” WCF has offered training in income-generating activities that are gaining in popularity. In Kyne’s hometown of Peah, she says that “sustainable livelihoods are more common, especially fish farming and beekeeping and cocoa farming.”
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Guardians of the Forest
Community Ecoguards in Grebo-Krahn National Park. Photo by Darius Barrolle
CONSERVATION CAREERS
The economic impact of the Ecoguard program is critical in a region where unemployment is endemic. The 28 Ecoguards are paid $150 per month by WCF, through the WA BiCC grant, for a 21-day patrol in Grebo-Krahn National Park. Ten of the Ecoguards are women, which helps uplift women’s role in community decision-making and income generation. The program also hires cooks and porters, providing an average of $1,000 per year into each of the 50 communities surrounding the park. In a country where the average annual income is less than $1,000, this is a significant new income stream. The new position has been transformative for Kyne. “My job allows me to help my family and give money to my mother and sisters,” she says, sitting alongside her fellow Ecoguards. Her father had been paying the school fees for her five sisters “but he left us. Now, I pay their school fees.” Kyne aspires to someday be a ranger with Liberia Forestry Development Authority. “The community respects me as an Ecoguard. But as a ranger I will get more respect and can help my family more.” BREAKING BARRIERS Felicia Kyne is eager to break gender stereotypes by working as an Ecoguard. “It gives me a chance as a woman to do things with men that other women can’t do. I work the same way they work. I carry the same load on my back in the bush. Anything they can do, I can challenge it.” Fellow Ecoguard Sylvester Yeoh concedes that the female Ecoguards have changed his mind. “Before, when I took the Ecoguard training, I felt that the women couldn’t do what we men do. But when we started the work,” he said, nodding approvingly towards Kyne, “they worked like us. They proved themselves.” Felicia Kyne does not consider herself a superhero. But in her own way—opening minds, raising awareness, and protecting the forest—she is changing the world. The quiet-spoken guardian of the forest smiles softly. “It makes me proud.”
Guardians of the Forest
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Philip Collins explaining why he hunts and the challenges of life. Photo by David Goodman
THE HUNTER Philip Collins stands by the side of a road in southeastern Liberia, a weak smile affixed to his face. Next to him, a West African dwarf crocodile dangles from a thick string affixed to a wooden post. Its fierce teeth are bared and its claws are splayed as if about to pounce on its prey. But the fearsome forest creature is dead, killed by Collins. Crocodiles are a protected species under Liberia’s wildlife laws and violators are subject to a fine of US$250 to US$5,000, or 4 to 6 months in jail. We pull over to inspect his catch. Collins approaches us, assuming we are customers. His pants are torn and he walks with a pronounced limp. He quickly realizes that we are not buyers.
A crocodile killed by the hunter. Photo by David Goodman
My colleague, Nouhou Ndam, a forest and biodiversity expert with the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program, asks him about the bushmeat. Collins looks at the ground. He seems embarrassed and nervous. Ndam assures him that we are not here to get him in trouble. We just want to learn his story. He is visibly relieved and agrees to talk. "I am not too happy about this,” Collins tells us, motioning to the crocodile. “I’m forced to hunt because of the situation. My children need to go to school right now so I got to hunt.”
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The Hunter
The Hunter
GOLD MINING
BLESSING & CURSE Liberia is blessed and cursed with valuable natural resources such as gold, diamonds, timber, and iron ore. However, these have brought precious little revenue to poor communities, where locals are paid a pittance to do hard and dangerous work. Many Liberians rely on artisanal, or small-scale, mining—both legal and illegal—to survive. Artisanal miners work independently, mining various minerals or panning for gold. But it is far-off traders who make the real money. Liberia ranks 176th (out of 189) on the global poverty index and is facing rising food insecurity while still recovering from the 2014 Ebola outbreak, which killed over 11,000 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Liberia’s natural wealth has also funded wars and environmental ruin. “Blood diamonds” and other coveted resources helped pay for civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone throughout the 1990s that killed thousands. Extractive industries have also taken a serious toll on the environment. The Upper Guinean Forest ecosystem, the transboundary landscape of which Sapo National Park is a part, is threatened by forest degradation and habitat loss. This is a result of agricultural encroachment; illegal bush meat hunting; and exploitation such as commercial logging, artisanal mining, and the large-scale conversion of natural forests into commercial plantations of oil palm and other cash crops.
ARTISANAL MINING IN LIBERIA IN NUMBERS An artisanal miner, or small-scale miner, works independently, mining various minerals or panning for gold using their own resources.
30,000 - 45,000 or almost 1% of the population of Liberia engages in artisanal mining
1,300 The estimated number of mining operations in Liberia as of 2010
88% of these operations were small artisanal mines
EFFECTS OF THESE OPERATIONS
Land degradation
Mining poses an ongoing threat to Sapo and other protected areas. Rangers operating in the park routinely destroy tents used by miners, who have adapted by using “hit and run” tactics, mining for short periods and then moving on. Mining camps also operate close to the buffer of the protected forests, which often results in encroachment and impacts inside the park. I have come to Camp Liberty to see an artisanal mining operation. I find a story of hard labor, little reward, and environmental devastation.
Water pollution
Biodiversity loss
3,695
Did you know? Liberia is home to over 3,600 different species of plants and animals
Gold Mining: The Environmental & Human Costs
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PROTECTING LIBERIA THROUGH DRAMA & LAUGHTER
Community members examine water polluted by gold mining in a dramatization performed by the Eddie Theater Company in Paynesville, Liberia. Photo by Darius Barrolle
The laughter and chatter of school students fill the Paynesville Town Hall, located in a suburb of Monrovia, the Liberian capital. The buzz of the audience falls silent as the stage suddenly comes to life. A man with a funny hat saunters onstage. He tells the other actors, dressed as curious villagers, that he is a foreigner looking for people to operate an illegal goldmine. “You tote my equipment to the forest and help me dig for gold, every day you get five dollars!” The villagers crowd around him. He instructs them to use mercury to separate out the gold. An old man stumbles over and asks an inconvenient question of the foreigner. “When you finish washing the gold with the mercury, what you do with the mercury?” The would-be mining tycoon cracks a weak smile. “I just throw it away in the river. No problem at all!” “Liberia is the dumping ground for foreign companies,” the old man says, turning to his neighbors. “That’s the river we bathe in. We drink from it and it’s the same water we use to cook. That mercury is dangerous. It’s poisonous!” Waving a crooked cane, he challenges the foreigner to drink the water that he is poisoning. The man begins making excuses and his face contorts as if smelling something foul. The villagers turn on him and drive him away. The audience bursts out laughing at the antics on stage. Laughs continue during the next skit, in which local people learn about the danger of hunting animals to extinction in protected areas like Liberia’s Sapo National Park, the oldest and largest national park in the country.
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Protecting Liberia Through Drama & Laughter
LIBERIA
Actors of Eddie Theatre Productions talk to residents of Greenville City about conserving Liberia’s natural resources. Photo by Darius Barrolle
The actors are trying to change the world through music, dance, and drama. The play is staged by local performers in Eddie Theatre Productions. The performance is supported by a grant from the USAIDfunded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program to the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation. The goal is to raise awareness around the importance of Sapo National Park and the laws that forbid hunting and mining in the park. The skits have been performed in communities around the park, and amateur theater troupes have been established and local actors trained in two communities. Liberia is emerging from the shadow of 14 years of civil war and an Ebola epidemic that killed approximately 11,325 people throughout West Africa between 2014 and 2016. Its newest challenge is the impact of climate change and threats to biodiversity. Sapo National Park in southeastern Liberia is part of a transboundary landscape with the new Grebo-Krahn National Park and Taï National Park in Côte d’Ivoire that is among the world’s greatest biodiversity hotspots—if it can be protected. That’s where the actors come in. “Don’t hunt in that protected forest,” an actor warns a villager. “You could be arrested! I want to get rich and make my children enjoy. But to go in the park? No way. I prefer to go to the other [community] forest. But not in the Sapo National Park.” Dancers leap across the stage and drummers beat a foot-tapping rhythm. The whole audience is caught up in the show. It is difficult to change traditional practices such as eating bushmeat. But through humor, dance, and theater, the seeds of change are sown. Afterward, I ask 19-year-old Ansu Trawally what he learned. He is dressed in a school uniform of navy-blue pants and a white shirt. “Future generations won’t be able to see the animals if we kill them for bushmeat. That was a new idea for me. I will tell my parents they shouldn’t do this."
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Protecting Liberia Through Drama & Laughter
Zainab Gassama and her daughters in front of her food shop. She started the business with a small loan from the Village Savings and Loan Association in Tunkiya, Sierra Leone. Photo by David Goodman
SAVING MONEY & THE RAINFOREST IN SIERRA LEONE Zainab Gassama stands in front of a table crammed with spices, onions, peppers, and tea. The items are neatly arranged to appeal to customers. The 27-year-old mother’s two baby daughters sit on opposite hips, as if on a seesaw, dressed in matching outfits. The girls cling to their mother as strangers approach. Gassama tells me that she married at 17 and farmed rice and groundnuts with nothing but a machete and hand-held hoe. She would be at the farm by 8 a.m. and clean the fields while the men were plowing. She would come back to cook for her family and care for her children. It was a lot of work with little reward. “Farming wasn’t working at all,” she laments. “It wasn’t enough to feed my family.” In Tunkiya, a village on the edge of Gola Rainforest National Park in eastern Sierra Leone, working hard but barely making ends meet is an all too common story. The challenges here are many, including an 11-yearlong civil war that ended in 2002 and killed approximately 50,000 people, displaced half of the country’s 4.5 million population, and severely damaged infrastructure. Another more recent scourge is evident in the signs posted at the village entrance warning people to help stop the spread of the Ebola virus. The Ebola epidemic raged in this area of Sierra Leone 2014 to 2016, killing thousands and bringing life and commerce to a halt. The cycle of poverty that grips this rural community started to change in 2016 when a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) was launched. It was a transformative opportunity: instead of relying on the ebb and flow of meager and unpredictable cash earnings, villagers began to put money aside and take out loans to invest in longer-term projects. The VSLA was launched with the help of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), a grantee of the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program.
Saving Money & the Rainforest in Sierra Leone
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KEY FACTS ABOUT THE GOLA TRANSBOUNDARY FOREST The Gola Transboundary Forest Landscape spans an area of 350,000 hectares (ha) and straddles the Sierra Leone and Liberia border. This highly threatened habitat is a global biodiversity hotspot and provides critical wildlife corridors.
60
49
327
threatened or endangered species
mammals (9 threatened)
bird species
232
899
43
vascular plants
amphibians
trees (21 threatened)
Area
Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone (71,070 ha), Gola Forest National Park in Liberia (91,968 ha), three community forests as corridors (30,000 ha), Kambui Hill (21,228 ha), Tiwai Island (16,157 ha), and buffer zones around protected areas as well as current and planned community forests (120,000 ha)
Threatened Species
Western chimpanzee, pygmy hippopotamus, Jentink’s duiker, and western red colobus monkey
Ecosystem Services
Water for drinking and irrigation for downstream communities, protecting soils from erosion, and mitigating climate change through the uptake and storage of tons of carbon that would be released into the atmosphere if the forest were lost
Development Initiative
Support and empower local communities in key forest corridor areas to become stewards of the natural resources with enhanced livelihood strategies such as Village Savings & Loan Associations
Source: WA BiCC
Saving Money & the Rainforest in Sierra Leone
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THE POWER OF SAVINGS & LOANS Gassama decided to take a chance. She contributed US$5 every 2 weeks to the VSLA. Her money was carefully logged and secured in a locked box. After 3 months, she took out a US$100 loan to start selling goods and improve her home. She promised to pay it back in 3 months at 10 percent interest. “I was very scared,” Gassama concedes, as her girls tug at her bright orange shirt. “But then I told myself, ‘This is a woman’s game and I’m a woman and I can do this.’ I decided to work hard.” She leaped at the opportunity to attend a training that the local VSLA offered on how to run a business. “I learned that a business is like a tree: I start with one item and after that I branch out and offer other goods and see what interests people.” She began selling salt, then Maggi seasoning and then onions and other goods. In 3 months, she paid back her US$100 loan and US$10 interest. She used half the money to expand her business, and the other half to purchase a new metal roof for her house. She was ecstatic. Moses Zombo, WA BiCC’s Gola Landscape Coordinator for Sierra Leone, says that of the many development initiatives he has seen, the VSLA “is one of the best.” “Rural people are not used to saving,” he explains. “There are people who have never been to a bank, so they have zero access to credit. There are all these loan sharks who come around. They come in the rainy season when people are hungry and they make deals to buy cocoa in advance for a low rate.” By contrast, every dollar saved or loaned in a VSLA is an investment in the community. “All the interest that you pay on a debt is money that comes back to you and the VSLA members,” says Zombo. This transforms the relationship that low-income people have with financial institutions, which have often punished and exploited them. “If you took a bank to a village, the people wouldn’t borrow,” Zombo asserts. “They would think this is the old system where if they default, they go to jail. In the village, it’s so easy to default. Maybe one male falls ill and his crops fail, and he loses everything. People need small financing to do their regular activities. Everybody needs it to get by hard periods. The biggest thing,” he says, “is it teaches them to save.”
EMPOWERING WOMEN IN BUSINESS Gassama is a busy businesswoman today. Each week she travels to the nearby city of Kenema to purchase goods from wholesalers. She notes, “My husband has seen the proceeds from the business, so he is supportive.” I ask Gassama if she will continue to farm. “I haven’t ruled out farming,” she replies, “but my husband has help so I don’t have to do all the farming.” When one person in Tunkiya succeeds, others take note. Salaymatu Bao, Gassama’s 37-year-old sister, launched her own business. Echoing her sister’s experience, Bao says, “I was just farming rice and cassava and it wasn’t working at all. I have children in school. Farming was not enough to feed my family.”
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Saving Money & the Rainforest in Sierra Leone
HELPING PEOPLE & MANGROVES ON SIERRA LEONE'S COAST
Girl carrying mangrove wood in Gbongboma, Sierra Leone. The destruction of mangroves decreases fish stocks and increases vulnerability to climatechange fueled storms. Photo by David Goodman
The tropical air hangs over the Sierra Leonean coastal village of Gbongboma like a moist towel. I find Musa Lahai sitting among his family in an enclave of thatched huts, surrounded by women and children siting around two cooking fires. Orange flames lick the sides of several large kettles of fish stew. “Before we were catching good fish. Now we’re not,” Lahai informs me, a baseball cap perched low on his head. He is deputy chief of the village, where approximately 90 people survive off earth’s bounties, from harvesting oysters to fishing, to farming and growing palm oil trees for their fruits and nuts. The traditional fishing-based livelihoods have become more difficult over the past several years, he tells me. Fishermen complain that the seas are being overfished by offshore trawlers, many from as far away as Asia, that use illegal nets to sweep up too many fish. And there is another less obvious but important reason that fish are scarcer: the unsustainable harvesting of mangroves, which local people use for firewood, smoking fish, and construction. Underscoring his point, young women balancing large bundles of mangrove wood periodically pass by us. An effort is underway in this fragile coastal landscape to save both people and mangroves, part of an initiative of the USAID-funded West Africa Biodiversity and Climate Change (WA BiCC) program.
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Helping People & Mangroves on Sierra Leone's Coast
People & Mangroves Gbongboma is located on Sherbro Island in the Sherbro River Estuary. This estuary is one of the country’s four Marine Protected Areas that are rich in plant and animal biodiversity and support critical livelihoods, such as fishing. It is also home to 58 percent of Sierra Leone’s mangrove cover. Mangroves play a vital role in food security and in the local economy because they are a breeding ground for fish and provide natural scaffolding for the locally important oysters to attach to and flourish. The loss of mangroves reduces fish’s spawning ground, leading to further depletion of fish. Because the trees grow near the water’s edge and have a dense, woody root system, they also protect against storm surges, coastal erosion, and flooding. Zebedee Njisuh, a mangrove management expert for WA BiCC who joined me on this trip, explains that the communities of the Sherbro River Estuary are “extremely vulnerable because of their location and the physical threat of sea level rise, low education, and the complexity of their history with the Ebola epidemic and civil war.” The 2014 Ebola epidemic killed over 11,000 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Sierra Leone is also still recovering from a civil war that raged from 1991 to 2002 and killed over 50,000 people. “All of that adds to the situation, and you need a lot of resources to be successful,” says Njisuh. The Sherbro River Estuary ecosystem also faces other threats, including the destruction of habitats for sea turtles and other endangered species; encroachment from agriculture, settlements and hunting; and the over-exploitation of fishery resources. During my visit, paramount chiefs and community leaders from around the coastal region have gathered in the town of Bonthe to attend a meeting convened by WA BiCC to discuss strategies for restoring and protecting mangroves. “As a small boy, we used mangroves as wood and charcoal for cooking,” says Thomas Koroma, Paramount Chief of the Sittia chiefdom. “Now we see the value of mangroves. We tell people if they continue to use it as the main source of firewood, it will cause disaster.” Back in his village, Musa Lahai is preparing to adapt to this changing world.
A Village Adapts Sitting in the shade of a hut, Lahai acknowledges that he and his neighbors have been cutting down mangroves for years. That began to change following workshops on mangrove restoration sponsored by WA BiCC in early 2018. “We learned the importance of mangroves,” he said. “If we just cut it down, water will flood our village.” Morie Kelfala, a member of Gbongboma’s mangrove restoration committee, interjects, “We learned that fish come to lay eggs and oysters spawn in the mangroves, and that it is a break against wind and waves that cause flooding. In our trainings, we learned how to do mangrove restoration. We are seeing more fish and oysters now.” I walk out along a narrow path into a mangrove swamp accompanied by Amara Kallon, a community organizer with WA BiCC. Large sections of mangroves have been cleared for fishing and firewood. But Kalone directs my attention to something else that is happening here: small green mangrove shoots are poking through the dried mud. By mid-2018, Gbongboma had cultivated a mangrove nursery and replanted nearly 2 hectares of mangroves. If this pilot project can be scaled up, it could make a difference for the resilience of coastal communities. It is a small inroad but a key symbol that communities are working to adapt to their changing world.
Helping People & Mangroves on Sierra Leone's Coast
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