The first phase of fieldwork has just been completed on an exciting interdisciplinary project in Sierra Leone. Social scientist Dr Natasha Constant and ecologist Dr Fiona Sanderson report back.
The Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone, where RSPB works closely with local NGOs and the Sierra Leonean government, is one of the largest remaining blocks of Upper Guinea Forest. It is a globally important biodiversity hotspot, holding at least 60 threatened species, including pygmy hippos, forest elephants and chimpanzees, more than 300 bird and at least 800 tree species.
Gola Rainforest National Park © Mark Hulme
Earning a living
The national park is a REDD+ project, meaning that income generated by selling carbon credits is shared with the 122 farming communities living on the forest edge through our partner Gola Rainforest Conservation LG (GRC-LG).
In the buffer zone where communities live, deforestation rates are limited to ensure that forest loss is not displaced from the national park to the surrounding area. The farmers are developing sustainable livelihoods that don’t cause forest loss and which maintain connectivity and habitat for wildlife between protected areas.
Gola Rainforest chocolate, and the Forest Friendly Cocoa that makes it, is one of those crucial livelihoods. Local cocoa farmers have joined together to farm Forest Friendly Cocoa under their association Ngoleagorbu, meaning ‘we who belong to the forest’ in the local language of Mende.
Hazaratu Kamara, one of our field workers, explains here how the project has changed since its inception in 2016:
“The Ngoleagorbu cocoa project came at a time when local people had almost lost interest in cocoa farming in Sierra Leone because the farmers were not organised, and they didn’t receive a good price for their cocoa beans - the business dealer or agent had total authority over the price.
“Today, we have set up a well-structured farmers’ organisation. Some farmers have travelled to different countries on exchange visits to share learning on cocoa production. They have been certified by Fairtrade standards where they qualify for a premium payment when they export their produce.”
Cocoa farms are important for biodiversity
The cocoa farms support important wildlife communities – previous research shows that at least 140 bird species, including globally threatened species like Yellow-casqued hornbill, live there. However, we know very little about other species groups on cocoa farms.
A typical cocoa farm close to Gola Rainforest National Park
Birds like hornbills depend on large native trees for food and nest sites and such trees are also important economically, as they can produce crops such as fruits, medicines, and even cosmetic ingredients. As Mohammed Feika, a young ecologist who collected field data for the project, notes,
“Almost all the farms we visited contained other crops of economic value like Coffee and Kola Nut. In Malema (the main cocoa-growing chiefdom), lumber trees are abundant in most farms.”
Global cocoa prices fluctuate and yields are affected by weather. Growing cocoa in a system that includes diverse income sources helps protect farmers against such fluctuations and can even lead to higher profits than those from monoculture cocoa, which supports less wildlife, so cocoa can be a win-win for biodiversity and livelihoods.
How to better diversifying income?
For forest edge communities, cocoa is one of the primary cash crops in the region, with potential to bolster and diversify income for farmers in an area with few livelihood alternatives. GRC-LG already work with the farmers to ensure their delicious chocolate commands a fair price, but to date we have a poor understanding of how Forest Friendly Cocoa contributes to generating and diversifying income for farmers.
We also know very little about the potential for other agroforestry trees to provide alternative forms of income. Through this research, we hope to explore the impacts of Forest Friendly Cocoa on biodiversity and farmers’ livelihoods and the income potential for other agroforestry trees on farms.
Fieldwork season
For the last few months, our Sierra Leonean colleagues - botanist Mohamed Swaray, his assistants Swaray Algaji and Feika Abdulai, and social science enumerators Hazaratu and Fomba Kamara - have been busy in the field surveying cocoa farms and interviewing farmers in more than 20 villages across the Gaura and Malema chiefdoms on the edge of the national park.
The Prince Albert survey team in the field
The botany team have mapped cocoa farms and carried out tree surveys, finding well over 100 tree species growing alongside cocoa.
Hazaratu and Fomba’s interviews will help us understand the impact of joining the Forest Friendly scheme on farmers’ incomes, their dependence on crops such as palm oil and other cash crops, knowledge of sustainable management practices, and how they harvest other forest products on farms and in the national park, leading to new insights into how other native trees provide farmers with food, medicines, and other cultural uses.
Mohamed Swaray describes some local uses of a native tree:
“The bark of Alstonia boonei is very effective for deworming and can be used for the treatment of malaria. The extracted bark should be put into a bowl with water poured on it and left for at least 12 hours, then drunk as a decoction.”
The first part of the fieldwork is now complete. The data will be used to understand and improve how Forest Friendly Cocoa delivers for both community livelihoods and biodiversity and lead to the development of a framework for evaluating the long-term impacts of how cocoa is grown around Gola Rainforest National Park.
For further information about this research please contact Dr Natasha Constant or Dr Fiona Sanderson. To learn more about Forest Friendly cocoa in general, contact Lisa Marie Newth.
This project was funded by Fondation Prince Albert II de Monaco.
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