“I Created a Community Forest”

Ouedraogo Drissa, a cocoa farmer from Kpada, Côte d’Ivoire, is an ambitious man: “Five years ago, our village was suffering from a lack of forest and when the program partners offered us forest tree seedings to be planted on our farms, I was able to obtain a hundred seedlings. I planted 30 trees on my one-hectare cocoa farm and with the remaining 70 trees, I created a community forest in my village. The following year I planted another 30 trees, leading to 100 trees planted in total in the community forest. I am very proud to say that all the 100 trees in the community forest as well as the 30 in my own cocoa farm survived,” says  Ouedraogo Drissa while describing how the Cocoa & Forests Initiative impacted his life.

 The community was motivated by “the awareness activities conducted by program partners on the importance of preserving forests, but also the increased impacts of climate change and the lack of rain we’ve suffered from,” explains Ouedraogo Drissa. “More of my friends have decided to join me and support and protect this growing forest.”

 They have planted two tree species, Cedrela and Fraké, and continue to ask for “many more seedlings to be planted, in order to create more community forests in our area”. They also encourage other villages to create community forests to gradually reforest Soubré. “For us, the solution to the challenges we face by climate change is to plant trees to ensure we have enough rain for our crop.”