Restoration approaches:
- Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR)
Goals:
- Restore native miombo woodlots on smallhold farms
- Promote sustainable exploitation of miombo woodland and sustainable forest management
- Promote economic development
- Build livelihood resilience
Discover more on WeForest’s website
Why is intervention needed?
In the Copperbelt province, more than anywhere else in Zambia, the typical miombo forest has suffered from mining and charcoal production. WeForest trains farmers in restoring their small farms (1 or 2 ha on average) with indigenous and fruit trees.
Ecological restoration
The project empowers farmers to restore miombo woodlots on their farmlands. Farmers with a minimum of one lima (0.25 hectares) of woodlot are recruited and trained in Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR), which involves protecting and nurturing wild tree seedlings. This process is carried out all year round and serves to promote the natural succession of the forest.
Livelihood development
Fruit trees take a while to produce food or income, so farmers need short-term alternatives to replace the cash they used to get from charcoal, for example. Beehives help a lot, as they can double a household's annual income in some cases. Farmers are also trained in harvesting biomass from their woodlots through coppicing, a technique that involves extracting wood from tree stems while leaving the total number of trees intact, making it a sustainable alternative to charcoal production.