Agroforestry with refugees and hosts in NW Uganda

Life is always eventful in a refugee settlement. We have been privy to forest crime. You heard that right. Forest crime. But first I want to talk about something more edifying: trees for refugees with disabilities. In this project, we  are proud to be assisting at least 18 households where the family heads are visually impaired or are living with other activity-limiting deficits such as lameness that creates difficulting in walking.

(Writing those words I am aware of language. I could say people with special needs, or use the term specially abled. I am following the example of the UN Refugee agency, UNHCR, which uses "refugees with disabilities".  I so sorry if for some that is not the phrasing you prefer. I understand.)

At 54, Joel is our longest serving and most experienced outreach worker. He started with us in 2018 and, with a Diploma in Forestry and a Degree in Social Works and Social Administration, is ideally suited to be attending to families affected by disability.

Hearing him describe one household that is doubly affected by disability, my immediate thought was "Oh no, how did they make it across the border from South Sudan? How did they flee?" The social worker in him responded "Those are sensitive questions that require gradual entrance. You do not ask right away".

Jackson and his wife are in their thirties. He is almost blind and has a weak misshapen leg. She suffers from epilepsy. They have a two year old child. "Living with disability in a refugee settlement means you will not access many things," explains Joel. "In most cases, the community neglects such people."

Given their needs, what we have done is not a lot. Their lives are still hardscrabble, their plots largely baked brown in the dry season. But our project has brought them hardwoods like Milicia excelsa (Mvule/Iroko), the exotic fast grower Senna siammea, which refugees like as a compound tree, Melia volkensii for poles, and Carica papaya (pawpaw) for fruit.

They are particularly happy with the pigeon peas seed we gave them: Cajanus cajans is a shrub that gives food (the pea), fodder, shade for small livestock like ducks, nitrogen and mulch for soil, and fuel from its stalks. "They plant them around the boundaries of their plots and, because it fertilizes crops, even now they have prepared their food garden to plant more pigoen peas," says Joel.

And the community does sometimes step up. Last time Joel visited the couple, they were enjoying the fruit of the Borassus aethiopum, a wild growing palm, that a neighbour had brought them. Our community-based facilitator (CBF) Joseph is working in Village 18, Zone 3 with a household where the male head has had a stroke. According to Joel, "He is just down, and his children have matured and are scattered in South Sudan". 

It is really heart warming that our CBFs and senior outreach workers, Joel and Gertrude, took it upon themselves to do this. Refugees with disabilities were not part of our mental map when we started in 2017. Now they very much are. In rather blurry photos taken on low res phones, see our nursery worker Patrick going an extra mile to weed Jackson's food garden and CBF Beida guiding a completely blind refugee on how to collect water in the absence of his wife. 

Now onto to forest crime. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, forest crime refers to the illegal exploitation of the world's flora, and is on the rise accross the globe, particularly in poor tropical countries. The UN FAO's  2020 Global Forest Resources Assessment Report, meanwhile, notes that "Africa had the largest annual rate of net forest loss, and that forests in West, Central, East and Southern Africa are particularly vulnerable to the ellicit exploitation of high-demand endangered trees, putting biodiversity, local economies and humans at great risk". 

One of those high-demand trees is Afzelia africana. This species is currently being taken out of the refugee area.  No one knows for sure who is extracting these trees or where they are going but demand is known to be strong in Vietnam and China. Our team was devastated this week to see that the largest and most towering Afzelia in our zone had been removed overnight. All that was left were a few branches. Conjecture is that local people will turn them into charcoa, a tiny short-lived dividend from the demise of a giant. 

Afzelia is not a fast growing tree. The oldest of those we have planted date from 2017 and are not more than two meters tall if that. It is a sore loss. Nothing we plant is likely to ever attain the size of that tree, certainly nothing in our lifetimes. Forest crime is one of the downsides of the new roads that were put in so that the UN, government and NGOs could the serve refugees. We had known these trees were being taken. But it had never come so close.

We thank you for your incredible support. Your donations just keep coming in. We are not disheartened - more like marveling at the challenges faced by these households coping with disability and our threatened landscape.  

We remain as strong in cur commitment as ever. And we have the planting season to look forward to. "The clouds are building up," says senior field officer Joel. "It's a sign of rain coming anytime now." For us and the refugees, it is a sign of hope.

Links:

• See this link for more on forest crime

Sometimes when you run a project it is hard to know how you are really doing. It is always awkward to self-praise. And we lean towards self-critical. So, in the refugee area, as rain poured down, mud deepened around huts, and vegetable patches grew sodden, it was heartening to hear from three people who see our work with refugees from the outside and had good stuff to say. 

The first was Ben, with whom we have collaborated since 2017 when we first set foot in West Nile. He works on energy for a German organization. Not everything our project does is perfectly documented. Sometimes we hand out seedlings, intending to record them later, but we do not. So when Ben told me that we had given his NGO seedlings that I had not known about, I was elated.

"You gave us seedlings of 6000 fast growing and 200 fruit trees to support Rhino Camp High School," he said. "That school has 1500 learners, a particularly active environment club, and 14 acres set aside for tree growing. They have already planted 10. Your seedlings will fill the gap so the school can have its own woodlot for fuel." 

The Ugandan humanitarian worker went on: "The school has a cooking program with improved stoves. So we also constructed a wood curing store to boost efficiency of utilization of the woody biomass. And we provided a moisture meter to help them determine if the wood is really dry enough to use. All this has makes a truly massive difference to the amount of wood they use." 

Clearly we are not the only ones doing good work! This is just so smart, and a measure of how the humanitarian response has become more environmentally tuned in the last five years. Largely gone are the days when agencies treated woodlands and forests as free fuel stores. Instead, more and more, schools with land are being supported to grow their own wood fuel, something that should be the norm everywhere, displacement setting or not. We are proud to have had an input into this.

We are even prouder about what Ben said next "Your Learning Centre is the only complete functional site in the refugee area with a training facility. Unlike other nurseries that run seasonally only for raising seedlings, it is a knowledge bank for community and partners. It has remained a model for learning and access to indigenous seedlings."

Immersed in pushing out seedlings to take advantage of the rain, we had not seen that statement coming. It was unexpected and welcome feedback. Oh heck, let's go full throttle and call it praise.

The second person seeing us from the outside was Ed in Bidi Bidi, the adjacent refugee settlement. His organization promotes building with "interlocking stabilised soil bricks" (ISSB) that are sun cured. This is a hugely powerful forest-saving approach to construction that, like woodlots for schools, should be the norm everywhere.

"A three-classroom block will use about 7000 ISSB bricks," he said. "Using ISSB bricks instead of fired bricks on a classroom block saves 24 tons of firewood and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 39 tons."

Let me repeat that - "saves 24 tons of firewood". On top of this jaw-droppingly effective tree-sparing approach to making bricks, his NGO is also planting trees in schools. We gave him 2700 seedlings this year of ten species, including African mahogany, fast growing indigenous Markhamia and Albizia, and food trees jackfruit, soursop and tamarind, the pods of which have Vitamin C rich pulp.  

"Over 70% of seedlings have survived," said the young British humanitarian worker. "And your trees from 2022 are doing great! We sadly lost about 45% of them, but the survivors have now benefited from two rainy seasons and are looking strong. And I must say Erik and John have been fantastic, always available and supportive."

Erik is our Uganda country representative and John our nursery manager. It is heartwarming to hear this about members of our. We have a lot of respect for Ed and his organization. We will always be a source of seedlings for them.

Finally, Sarah, who was originally based with us, has now taken a step back and is studying not just what we do but also the different tree-based approaches of multiple agencies, NGOs and government across refugee settings in Uganda. She said something to us at a time we were feeling outright stressed and overwhelmed.

“It takes a lot to have people on the ground promoting the mission," said the PhD student and Fulbright awardee. "Most NGOs are planting exotic woodlots. Very few have the bandwidth for multiple species like ICRAF is doing.”  

It was encouraging to hear that and gives us a boost to go on. In the last quarter we have seriously pondered whether, despite your generous donations, we can continue much longer without official funding from an international donor, something we constantly seek.

But just as we were wavering, Sarah reaffirmed our model: "Thirty to forty trees are totally possible on most refugee plots, especially with planting on boundaries. And when you combine it with the biocircular economy approach that ICRAF is also promoting, where all water and organic matter is re-used, you maximize what you can get from the plot."

Referring to Lily, a refugee who is one of our community-based facilitators, she further said, "I can really see the ICRAF model manifested on her own plot. She has a woodlot, boundary trees, and a homegarden. She has easily 50 trees."

The refugee response in West Nile, NW Uganda, is at a crossroads. The UN and other agencies are scaling down because of other global emergencies. Most donor-funded environmental projects are ending. But we are not packing up yet. Ben, the Ugandan humantarian worker who I spoke of at the beginning, said about our project:

"We need to push all avenues to find resources to sustain the Learning Centre and its extension model, considering the role it plays in restoration of the ecosystem."

Then he said, "Let's sail together."

And for now that's what we plan to do with every sinew that we have. With excellent partners like Ben and Ed, with the scrutiny of researchers like Sarah, with our field team, with our Nairobi leadership, and with your generous donations, we will continue to do our best for refugees, hosts and biodiversity. Thank you to all of you for sailing with us for all these years. Thank you helping us grow and conserve tree cover in Imvepi and Rhino Camp Refugee Settlerments. 

Links:

• Interlocking Stabilized Soil Bricks: no firewood required
• Research by Virginia Tech scholar on trees and refugees