ONE WORLD
ONE WORLD
Bongo river trees project - year four
So far 60,000 tree and shrub seedlings have been planted, protected and
watered through this project in Upper East Ghana. The seedlings grown are
mostly native and are therefore tolerant to the climate and soil conditions.
TREE AID’s central tree nursery in Bongo provides employment for three
people who have been recruited as nursery attendants. The saplings grown
in the nursery include mahogany, grafted mango and cashews which provide
crops for families to eat or sell. 18,000 saplings were grown in that nursery
during 2015 alone.
www.treeaid.org.uk
THE GREENING OF MOPTI AN AMAZING SUCCESS
IN THE FACE OF
CHALLENGING ODDS
Planting Schemes And Weirs
The planting of trees, shrubs and propagated Indian vetiver grass is
progressively restoring the land and preventing the river banks from eroding.
The TREE AID planting schemes and the four community weirs that have
been built are helping the landscape to retain moisture and top soil by
filtering and slowing the flow of flood waters. The water table has risen
in places and boreholes nearest the river have been recharged thereby
lowering the harmful concentrations of minerals present in many of them.
Water Resources Commission
The local office of the Ghana Water Resources Commission has agreed to
continue to monitor and supervise the management and maintenance of
the four weirs when the project ends in February 2017.
Early signs of recovery for degraded agricultural land employing the Zai pits technique
This TREE AID project, jointly funded by RPS and
390,000 people
living in subsistence farming communities across
16 communes of the Mopti region of Southern
Mali. It has created 180 hectares of productive
agricultural land in the three most precarious
communes of Segeu, Timiniri and Bara-sara and
1,084,124 trees have been grown through
the planting of well over 200,000 tree seedlings
and through assisted natural regeneration.
Of the planted seedlings no less than 147,467
trees have been established as part of
to the communities in which they have been
planted.
With RPS and the EU’s support, TREE AID
was able to continue working on this project
in Southern Mali despite the war to expel
fundamentalist Islamic insurgents from Libya, the
displacement of many Toureg civilians arriving as
refugees as far south as Mopti and the military
coup in the Malian capital of Bamako. Despite
these many challenges the project greatly
exceeded all of its aims and objectives.
Maurice Kone, TREE AID’s Mali Country Manager,
was able to safely deploy his team of Malian staff
at a time when many other aid agencies much
more reliant of foreign expats opted to suspend
their operations in Mali for a year or more.
TREE AID was able to facilitate links between
inter-community groups and local agencies and
has produced with them an agreed strategy
Maurice Kone,
TREE AID Mali Country Manager
RPS & Tree Aid win
major award
In addition to tree planting and assisted natural
forest regeneration techniques TREE AID was
instrumental in the widespread introduction
of bunds and rock lines along the contours
of the land and of Zai pits or shallow planting
TREE AID and RPS Group Plc were the
outright winners of a Business Charity
Award given by Third Sector Magazine
and its expert panel of 28 judges.
in Mopti very successfully to concentrate water
and nutrients in the roots of planted seedlings as
well as to increase grain yields in highly degraded
sandy agricultural soil. Though labour intensive,
the Zai pits could be dug during the farmer’s
quieter periods.
of Bara-Sara)
Members of the Amakene village association in Mopti, Southern Mali,Ouo-Guina
gathered on(municipality
their eucalyptus
plot in April 2016.
treeaid.org.uk
Rotterdam University students visit the construction site of the RPS
- TREE AID ‘Bongo West’ community weir at Atampisi in February 2016.
for managing the existing forests at Samori
and Ségué. Fifteen local forest management
agreements have now been successfully
approved by the local authorities in Mopti.
TREE AID’s Chief Executive Officer John Moffett said: “TREE AID
has been very lucky to have RPS’ financial support and access to
the company’s multi-disciplinary technical expertise. Ours has been
a very successful and long-standing partnership and I’m delighted
that the awards’ judges recognised the value of the work we have
been doing together.”
Douglas Lamont of RPS Group visits the completed Namoo-Boko
water management structure in Bongo, Upper East Ghana in December 2015.
Friday, 11th March 2016
Oscar van Dam of RPS and Jonathan Naba of Tree Aid (third from the left) pose
on top of the completed ‘Bongo West’ weir alongside the Atampisi community
volunteers and local artisan builders.They look upstream along the dry riverbed.
Saturday, 12th March 2016
Almost miraculously the very next day the newly completed ‘Bongo West’ weir at
rpsgroup.com