Project for Climate compensation
Trees are like the lungs of the planet. Through the natural process of photosynthesis, trees absorb CO2 and other pollutant particulates, then store the carbon and emit pure oxygen.
Explore Tours will plant 50 trees for each traveler/customer, whatever the destination, to compensate the emissions of CO2 when flying. Maria Holmberg who is responsible for the project in Tanzania, tells us more:
Care for the environment - "JALI MAZINGIRA"
Jali Mazingira is Swahili language and means “Care for the environment”. I have that slogan on my car since I started to travel around the country of Tanzania for the Environmental Education Project this year 2010.
I am living in Nyamahanga village, in Biharamulo district, Kagera region in north western Tanzania and here I am involved in a project of building up Nyamahanga Teachers College and a program with help to most vulnerable children in the villages. We call the children program Nyamahanga Children’s Village (NCV); earlier it was an orphanage for motherless children 0 – 2 years of age. The environmental education is a program for FPCT units all over the country, so it makes me travel a lot, but it is very inspiring!
Nyamahanga village is the No 1 in Biharamulo when it comes to tree planting and care of the nature. Almost every home in the village has planted trees and many of them have thousands of them. The hillside beyond the station is a nice demonstration in forest management; there are planted eucalyptus trees and the natural forest is protected. Both the Children’s Village program and the Teachers college have planted forests and a coffee and banana plantation. Every child who gets help through the program gets tree seedlings planted at home. Last year 1 200 trees were planted for the children in their homes.
Biharamulo district has natural forests and some areas are forest reserves, but in every village where people are allowed to settle down and cultivate fields, the natural trees including hard wood timber trees are cut down; if they are big enough for timber or not. Small trees are taken for charcoal and big trees for sawn timber. Fortunately it is possible to recover natural forests by leaving the stump to coppice, so where ever we have bought land for tree planting, we have leaved the natural trees to grow together with the planted trees. When people ask us to teach them tree planting we advise them to do the same and in every seminar in environmental management we put big emphasis on protection of natural forests.
I have a route for the environmental education project from Biharamulo in North West to Ruo, Lindi in South East of Tanzania. In Ruo, Lindi, FPCT is running a secondary school since year 2005. There is a huge area of land, 1300 hectares, because before it was a college of agriculture. FPCT has asked me to help them with planning of sustainable use of the area. There are fields for different crops but most of it is cashew nut plantation and natural forest with hard wood timber trees and other useful trees. We are planning to protect and manage the natural forest for sustainable use of it and along the border and on open areas we will plant timber trees like pine, wild kapok and teak.
What we are going to do with the climate compensation money:
In Biharamulo area where people have seen the benefit of planted trees – we will buy seedlings from the Nyamahanga Children’s Village tree nursery and give people one seedling for every protected natural tree. If the protected tree is a hard wood timber tree, they will get seedlings five years; one for the first year, two for the second, three for the third, four for the fourth and five for the fifth year.
We will buy seedlings from the nursery for most vulnerable children in villages. – When we buy seedlings from our own nursery, the money will help us to do the follow up of our children and the children will have trees that they can sell timber from after 15 to 20 years.
In Ruo, Lindi people still have to be aware of the benefit for the future from planted trees, so we are going to make the Ruo Secondary School area to be a demonstration in forestry. Village people will get job with tree planting and learn by doing. We have started a tree nursery and will buy seedlings from it for the school area. Then we will have money to run the tree nursery and grow more trees for next season.
Many trees will be planted through the project and natural forests will recover and still the money will help most vulnerable children in Biharamulo and in the future help to run the Ruo Secondary school. I don’t have good experiences of just giving away things for free, but when people have to work for something that they really want, they will take care of it.
