Growing a forest in Sierra Leone

Oko Environmental, the carbon focused subsidiary company of agricultural inputs parent company, Demeter Holdings, is launching a reforestation carbon offsetting project with the goal of planting up to 16,000 hectares of new woodland over the next several years. This project is being implemented in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, where, with a sibling subsidiary company, West African Agribusiness and alongside the in-country team, Demeter has been operating since 2012 in agricultural development. The focus now being the development and implementation of carbon offsetting projects, there were a few options to choose from in terms of carbon project type, but reforestation was deemed to be the most impactful and there are many reasons behind this decision.

Sierra Leone is now 20 years on from the devastating 11-year civil war that began in 1991 and ended in 2002. Sierra Leone is still reeling from the conflict that shook its nation and is still to this day being consistently rated as one of the poorest countries in the world. The country’s core national mandate is economic recovery and stability, however this was derailed in 2014 when it was gripped by the deadly Ebola virus that swept the nation and was only contained in 2016, after which the country’s economy had been devastated, yet again.

The majority of the population of Sierra Leone live in rural communities and small towns throughout the country. Only 35% of the population live in large urban areas such as Freetown, Bo and Kenema. Agriculture is a key driver for Sierra Leone’s economy, employing over two thirds of the total labour force of the country and accounting for 60% of GDP. Similar to most Sub Saharan African Nations, Sierra Leonian families and communities rely on subsistence agriculture for survival. It is the right of these communities to provide for their families and, due to the terrible circumstances of civil war and endemic and pandemic diseases, these communities have had to rely on their natural resources with little to no alternatives available.

Unfortunately, however, this crop fallow cycle is incredibly damaging to the continents natural resources with shifting agricultural practices being one of the most prolific causes of deforestation throughout Africa. The typical shifting agriculture pattern involves a farmer deforesting a section of woodland, several hectares in size, farming the land until it becomes unproductive and then repeating the process by deforesting a new section of land. Between 2013 and 2019, shifting agriculture alone resulted in 1.3 million hectares of deforestation. The two decades between 2000 and 2020 saw the country lose 30% of its total forests resulting in over 808 million tonnes of CO2e emissions being released into the atmosphere. The statistics are devastating, environmentally, climatically and socially.

So, considering all the above, Oko’s goal is to implement re-forestation projects in Port Loko with the key strategy for success being working with and alongside local communities, integrating local knowledge and practices, ensuring community engagement and participation.

The project is currently at the pilot stage and has been designed as a 50-hectare testing and monitoring site. Working alongside industry specialists, this pilot will allow us to test and study various re-forestation methodologies so that best procedure can be guaranteed when implementing the full 16,000-hectare project. The pilot project is being implemented this summer, with planting planned for May and June of this year to coincide with the start of Sierra Leone’s wet season, which will last until November. The Demeter and Oko teams recently went out to visit Port Loko staff to start preparing the groundwork for the project and meet with members of the local communities to introduce the project and foster support and goodwill. Projects such as this are only successful if the local communities are supportive, supported and involved with the project’s goals, our ongoing strategy, therefore, is to maintain transparent communication with everyone involved.

One of the key reforestation methods being explored is Assisted Natural Regeneration, or ANR. ANR is a less intrusive, more biodiverse methodology that allows forests to regenerate in a more natural way. ANR is consists mainly of planning and monitoring, a ‘blend of active planting and passive restoration’ where deforested and degraded tracts of land are encouraged to recover through preventing the key drivers that lead to the deforestation and degradation in the first place. Due to the relatively low implementation costs associated with ANR, the nature-based solution is capable of restoring millions of hectares of land.

ANR and community engagement being a key part of the agenda, at the top of the itinerary was a planned community expedition to visit many of the small villages and towns around Port Loko and survey the indigenous woodlands around them. The goal was to study and identify indigenous tree species growing in these forests and to gather seed samples to conduct a series of germination trials back at the nursery. This all fed into our species data base of Sierra Leonian trees that are readily available and accessible to local communities. This expedition also developed the foundation of a seed collection and community engagement initiative being launched alongside the pilot, that will allow us to work with the communities to gather seeds directly from local woodlands. This initiative allows Oko to gather local seeds directly from the communities, ensuring the biodiversity the forests need, as well as ensuring that our project’s funds reach the communities that need it most, directly.

As a part of the re-forestation pilot project, sustainable timber extraction is also being explored. Now, you might be thinking ‘well that’s not exactly re-forestation for conservation, is it?’. But there is a reason behind wanting to include an aspect of sustainable timber production as a part of the whole project, and that is for sustainable fuel-wood production. Shifting agricultural practices and a national reliance on fuel wood for everyday use is an integral part of Sierra Leonean life. These practices will not go away overnight, and a key aspect of overall project success will be in working with the communities to ensure that the new forests grown will be protected and will not be deforested in the future. Introducing pockets of controlled, sustainable, rotation forestry for fast growing tree species for fuel wood production, alongside the conservation forests, that can be supplied to local communities, negating their need to source the fuel wood themselves through deforestation, could be an important, complementary addition and safeguarding exercise as part of the whole project.

Community engagement was paramount during this initial trip to Sierra Leone and very quickly became apparent that projects such as this are very much needed in the remoter regions of the country. Large scale projects engaged with local economies can provide important opportunities, not just in terms of direct jobs, but in complementary business ventures for intrepid local entrepreneurs. As an example of the keenness of the community to work with Oko on the forestry project, a rather astonishing thing happened the day after a site was chosen on which to implement the pilot project. The previous day there had been a meeting with the local community land council to scout for and agree on the location of the pilot site. The next morning, returning back to the chosen pilot site to start conduct a site survey, we found the entire area, previously covered in scrub grass and small bushes as typical to the local savannah style landscape, had been burnt to the ground. This was not wildfire, but a controlled slash and burn fire the community had set that evening to prepare the site for land clearing, ahead of our planting phase. No instructions had been given for this burn, the community did it of their own volition, keen as they are to encourage project development in their area and show their enthusiasm and willingness to be involved in the project. It was an eye-opening experience, and it alludes to the slash and burn, shifting agricultural pattern that is part of everyday life in Sierra Leone and wider Africa.

Now with the pilot site chosen and the implementation strategy agreed to, work has now begun on the next stage of project which is logistics organising and preparation for planting out the pilot in May this year. With the successful implementation of the pilot later this year, plus the ongoing data gathering and monitoring from the team in Port Loko, the project will move to the full-scale implementation phase.  This exciting next step involves working with Oko’s project partners, stakeholders and network of impact investors to raise the carbon finance needed to launch the full scale 16,000-hectare reforestation project.