Sustaining the Fouta Djallon ecosystem and its associated services
The Fouta Djallon Highlands are a mountain ecosystem that straddles the Republic of Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Aerial view of part of the Fouta Djallon highlands.
Fouta Djallon highlands are sources of West Africa’s most important rivers: Senegal, Gambia, Niger and Mano rivers. These rivers provide drinking water, irrigation and hydroelectric power to millions of people in Senegal, Mauritania, Gambia, Mali, Niger and Nigeria. They are critical for sustaining livelihood systems.
The Guinean highlands are densely populated, with up to 120 inhabitants per square kilometer compared with the national average of 24 persons per square kilometer. The greatest share of local livelihoods is derived from agroforestry, forestry activities and animal husbandry. Natural resource and watershed degradation are caused principally by shifting cultivation, excessive logging, uncontrolled bush fires and overgrazing. Ecosystem degradation will affect these livelihood systems and associated services.
Policy makers at various levels across the Fouta Djallon countries have shown interest in adopting reward schemes for environmental services and there are policy responses towards this direction. For instance, Sierra Leonean forestry authorities have highlighted the need to develop rewards based initiatives as a strategy to better manage the country’s classified forests.
PRESA partners intend to build upon these regional initiatives in laying a social foundation for the design, piloting and scaling up of transfer schemes for environmental services.
An ecosystem in danger
Many West African ecosystems have been degraded by land use decisions that cause deforestation, soil fertility decline and loss of biodiversity. This is attributed to slow integration of environmental considerations at different levels.
Low farm productivity adds to this problem, and combines with inadequate diversification of farming systems, poor access to markets, unsustainable land-use practices and weak capacity among local institutions to innovate.
Few formal mechanisms have been developed to reward communities engaging in forest conservation to sustain ongoing landscape management initiatives. Reward schemes for environmental services provide opportunities to enhance institutional capacity linking environmental service modifiers (farmers) to downstream service beneficiaries. Rewards schemes have the potential to provide the platforms to address ecosystem degradation and the effective and efficient allocation of resources.
Opportunities and challenges for PRESA
In 2005, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), the Centre for International Forestry Research and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) started the Landscape Management for Integrated Livelihoods (LAMIL) in Guinea. LAMIL provided alternative livelihood options to adjacent communities in order to reduce pressure on forest resources. A package of agroforestry techniques has been introduced to restore soil fertility.
LAMIL has built strong connections between project and policy makers in the sub-region while enabling partnerships with the private sector, community based organizations and non-governmental organizations. For instance, LAMIL is facilitating a multi-stakeholder ecosystem dialogue via the Mano River states platform. The PRESA Project will make use of LAMIL opportunities in addressing challenges such as capacity building.
The PRESA Project will be exploring different types of reward schemes including the provision of extension services, capacity building and facilitation of land tenure security. Co-management has been used to address human-wildlife conflict and is a viable option as it matches PRESA’s pro-poor conservation approach.
Where appropriate, reward schemes may feature cash rewards or compensation for ecosystem stewardship. The cash payments could be direct payments for community forestry, household compensation for family plantations or carbon market credits.
PRESA is building on ICRAF’s experiences across Africa and Asia. The Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) project in Asia provides useful lessons for pro-poor rewards for environmental services and its tools, methods and approaches can be adapted to local contexts.
Conservation efforts will need more commitment to concrete scientific research to produce solid evidence for policy makers and donor action. Within the PRESA project, relevant research activities will include scoping studies, policy analysis, stakeholder analysis and capacity building.
There are plenty of opportunities for interested parties to get on board in building a fair and effective ecosystem reward mechanism for the Fouta Djallon highlands.