IRIN Focus on efforts to rehabilitate the environment

UN agencies, NGOs, refugees and local communities have joined hands in an effort to protect and rehabilitate the environment in southern Guinea, but participants say available resources fall short of actual needs. Over 300,000 Sierra Leoneans and smaller numbers of Liberians sought refuge in Guinea over the past decade, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. Most have been accommodated in camps and villages in the south of the country. However, in recent years local authorities have complained that hosting the refugees has taken a toll on the environment. In particular, they say, forests have had to be cleared to make way for camps and farms. After armed groups said to include Sierra Leonean rebels, Liberians and Guinean dissidents carried out raids into Guinea in late 2000, refugees were relocated from areas closest to the borders, especially the Parrot’s Beak, a piece of Guinean territory that juts into Sierra Leone. Following the relocation, the World Food Programme (WFP) spearheaded the cleaning up of former camps in the Parrot’s Beak area. According to Hans Rikoler, head of WFP’s Kissidougou office, this entailed activities such as dismantling structures left behind, such as huts and latrines, whose pits had to be filled up so as not to present a potential danger to people from neighbouring villages. Some 74 former camps were cleaned up, Rikoler told IRIN. The US Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration is providing US $500,000 for a second phase of the project, which involves the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). This phase includes rehabilitating the environment in refugee hosting areas, and promoting environmentally sound food security. Under the project, launched in November 2001, some 7,700 refugees and people from nearby communities recently received rice, ground nut and maize seeds as well as hoes and machetes. Trees are being planted in former camps as well as existing ones. The project also entails helping local people near the camps to plant perennials such as coffee trees and oil palms. However, there is a big gap between available funding and the amounts that will be needed to repair the damage done in southern Guinea, where the signs of the impact of human activity on the ecology, such as denuded hillsides, abound. “We have resources for rehabilitating 110 ha whereas the need is more than 1,500 ha,” Marc Abdala Tata, coordinator of FAO’s emergency agricultural and rehabilitation operations in the southern town of Kissidougou, told IRIN in May. “We estimate that it costs at least US $500 to rehabilitate one hectare. For 1,000 ha we need $500,000 for rehabilitation alone, not including the other expenses.” Of the 74 former refugee sites, only three are being replanted, Tata said, adding: “We want to extend the project and we hope to encourage donors since the cost is high.” In the meantime, FAO and its implementing partner, the Centre canadien d’etude et de cooperation internationales (CECI), have been trying to halt the degradation in refugee camps, such as Boreah in Kissidougou District, where some 200 ha of trees have been marked with white crosses denoting that they must not be cut, CECI’s Tambakele Mansare told IRIN. New trees are also being planted in the camps, mainly a hardy acacia that reaches maturity in about seven years, Mansare, an agronomist, said. Building and distributing stoves that use less fuelwood is another means being used to reduce the pressure on forests in and around refugee camps. However, for Mansare, a key to the success of protection efforts are the resource management committees CECI has helped set up in the camps. “These committees, which are made up of refugees, help us to sensitise refugee populations with a view to reducing their pressure on the environment,” Mansare said. Similar committees have been created in surrounding villages. UN agencies and NGOs have also been encouraging refugees and villagers to plant rice in swamps and lowland valleys rather than on hillsides, thus reducing erosion. Planting in the low-lying areas also means less land is needed by farmers since yields in such areas are twice as high as on slopes, Tata said. Displaced persons and members of host communities who participated in a just-ended FAO technical cooperation project reaped up to 2,500 kg of rice from one ha of swamp as against 1,000 to 1,200 kg/ha on slopes, Tata said. The project covered some 5,000 households in Kissidougou and three other southern districts, Gueckedou, Forecariah and Kindia. However, these were just a fraction of the people needing help. In Gueckedou alone, where most of the beneficiaries (4,000) were located, some 12,000 IDP families were identified.