Photo credit: WVC 1999-11
Use of TC in a Chinese greenhouse in HongHe (Gansu Province (P.R. China)
(1) English translation
(2) Chinese text
presented by Prof. Dr. Willem Van Cotthem (Ghent University – Belgium – Chairman of TC-Dialogue Foundation)
Photo credit: WVC 1994-07 – Bois de la Fraternisation in Arbolle (Burkina Faso),
Belgian TC-Dialogue with Canadian Cooperation
Happy to remind me of an former publication in the CBD Magazine 2002
by Prof. Dr. Willem Van Cotthem (Belgium)
Click on the text to enlarge the size
Photo credit: Willem Van Cotthem
2007-01-SMARA-TV-P1000589
One of the family gardens in Smara refugee camp
Some people seem to have forgotten Peter KENWORTHY’s 2012-article:
https://stiffkitten.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/un-unsustainability-in-the-tindouf-refugee-camps/
but we didn’t. So, here it is :
MARCH 11, 2012 LEAVE A COMMENT
The UN says that it seeks sustainability in its work and programmes, that it seeks “integration of the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in policy-making at international, regional and national levels”.
And the UN’s Children’s Fund, UNICEF, says on its website that “UNICEF has worked from its founding on nutrition programming aimed at fulfilling every child’s right to adequate nutrition,” because “good nutrition benefits families, their communities and the world as a whole.”
But these principles have seemingly not been applied in the Tindouf refugee camps. Here approximately 150.000 Saharawis have been in a desert exile for 35 years, since their homeland, Western Sahara, was invaded by Morocco.
Over the last 25 years, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has spent many millions of dollars on keeping the Saharawis in the camps from starvation – although malnutrition in the camps is still widespread and WFP funds for the camps are decreasing.
According to the WFP, “opportunities for self-reliance in the harsh, isolated desert environment where the [Tindouf refugee] camps are located are extremely limited, forcing the refugees to rely on international assistance for their survival. Malnutrition rates remain high, with acute malnutrition at a critical level of 18.2 percent, chronic malnutrition at 31.4 percent and underweight at 31.6 percent.”
But until it was abruptly terminated in late 2007, UNICEF ran a successful and seemingly sustainable family garden project in the camps. The project saw 1200 family gardens constructed in extremely adverse agricultural conditions, vegetables and fruit trees being produced by means of minimum water and fertilizer input, using special water-stocking soil conditioners, and agricultural techniques taught to the participating families and school children.
“Any neutral observer will understand that there is a dramatic difference between shipping food aid to the refugee camps for 35 years, as has the WFP, and creating local food production in a sustainable way, as has the UNICEF project,” says Botany Professor Willem Van Cotthem, who was a UN scientific consultant on the gardens project from 2005 to 2007.
Van Cotthem is still puzzled why the UN suddenly ended the project. “The enthusiasm about the successes with the family gardens in the camps was unprecedented,” he says. “All the Saharawi ministers and the President himself expressed their hope that UNICEF would continue that magnificent project until every refugee family had its own garden.”
And the reason for the terminations of the project was not a lack of information of the project’s accomplishments, he insists, nor any misgivings about its achievements. “Staff members of UNICEF, UNHCR and the World Food Programme visited the camps several times to observe the progress made. Medical doctors and consultants of UNICEF repeatedly confirmed that the consumption of fresh food and fruit had a very positive effect on the level of malnutrition.”
Small-scale family gardens that produce fresh food are widely accepted as being an important part of a successful food production, and subsequently on the nutritional intake of desert populations such as in the Tindouf refugee camps, and they are also a cheaper and more sustainable way of supplying food than shipping it from abroad, Van Cotthem insists.
“A growing production of vegetables and fruits forms the embryonic stage of a potential local market development in the camps,” he says. “And training the refugees in agricultural and horticultural techniques, as a group of experts and technicians did, is a rewarding investment in knowledge and skills that is applicable in any future situation, even if the dispute with Morocco gets settled and the refugees return home.”
According to Van Cotthem, the reason given for terminating the project was an Al-Qaeda-executed terrorist attack on a UN building in Algiers that killed over 60 people, including 17 UN staff members – an attack UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon called an “abjectly cowardly strike.” “And if lack of funds is the reason for stopping the garden project,” says Van Cotthem, “then one cannot understand why a project for sustainable development of local food production is stopped in favour of shipping food.”
And Van Cotthem is adamant that the results of this omission, on top of food aid cutbacks, are and will be disastrous. “Malnutrition will enhance and hunger will be looming. Already in 2007-08 the level of food stocks in the camps was catastrophic. But the international organisations are fully in a position to compensate the reduction in shipped food by offering the Saharawis the chance to develop a maximum number of gardens.”
In the mean time, the Saharawis themselves and private initiatives such as the “Be Their Voice” –programme, which runs small-scale family gardens, have attempted to fill the gap left by the UN. But as the Saharawis are strapped for cash and NGO-driven programmes rely mostly on private donations to a mostly unknown refugee crisis, the capacity and scope of such projects is by no means sufficient.
Read More:
The case for Western Saharan independence
Photo credit: WVC 1994-07
Reforestation project with the soil conditioner TerraCottem – Bois de la Fraternisation – Arbolle (Burkina Faso) 1988-1994 – Project of TC-Dialogue (Belgium)
VIDEO : https://youtu.be/0360iMXnxeY
BY CIFOR (CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH)
In Burkina Faso, in West Africa, deforestation has reduced income and livelihoods.
Simple steps have helped families deal with the loss of trees and brought their farms back to life.
Green Treasure of the Sahel travels with one family as they go on a journey of discovery across the country to find out how they too can bring life back to their land.
A longer version of Green Treasure of the Sahel is available here.
Read more of CIFOR’s West Africa special:
In Burkina Faso, small solutions and big returns
In Burkina Faso, disappearing rains and new realities
Photo credit: WVC 1999-11
Lawn in front of Ministry of Forestry, Beijing, P.R. China
Lawn treated with soil conditioner TerraCottem
State Forestry Administration Network Feb. 10 hearing on January 30, the Chinese Academy of desertification was held in 2015 by the National Natural Science Foundation Project Application Symposium.
At the meeting, Chinese Academy of desertification are ready to apply for the National Natural Science Foundation of researchers reported the project research ideas and specific programs. Participants conduct extensive exchanges and discussions to help the project application was explicitly critical scientific issues and to further clarify research ideas.
The exchange will mobilize scientists declared the National Natural Science Foundation of enthusiasm, active academic atmosphere of the Institute, to improve the success rate researchers of the National Natural Science Foundation of China has an important role in promoting.
Member of the Chinese Academy of desertification Academic Committee and more than 20 researchers participated in the exchange(http://www.fireinews.com/). (Chinese Academy of Forestry
Source: Chinese Academy of Forestry
Photo credit: WVC 1997-12
Acacia nilotica in Bois de la Fraternisation (Arbolle, Prov. du Passore, Burkina Faso) – Reforestation project of TC-Dialogue Foundation (Belgium): trees planted in 1988 with soil conditioner TerraCottem
As the desert in West Africa’s Sahel region began growing faster than ever in the 1970s and 1980s and many farmers left the land, a farmer in a small town in northern Burkina Faso developed creative methods to restore soils damaged by drought. Yacouba Sawadogo innovated on regionally well-known farming techniques to create a large, easy-to-farm forested area, working with his community to reinvent agriculture in the region.
See the video: PBS Learning Media
Photo credit: WVC 1989 Toudou scan 399
TC-Dialogue Foundation’s reforestation project in Toudou (Burkina Faso) : planting saplings with the soil conditioner TerraCottem
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 3rd international scientific conference on “combating desertification, land degradation and drought for poverty reduction and sustainable development – the contribution of science, technology, traditional knowledge and practices” will be held from 9 to 12 March 2015 in Cancun (Mexico).
The conference aims to attract the widest possible range of scientific, local and traditional knowledge that can be harnessed to achieve poverty reduction and sustainable development in areas susceptible to desertification, land degradation and drought.
One of the major challenges facing delegates to the conference is the development of new scientific insights and recommendations to policy makers with regards to the assessment of vulnerability of socio-ecosystems to climate change and current and future capacities to adapt.
Read the full article: Agropolis International
Photo credit: Willemien – Committee Maastricht-Niou
Bois de la Fraternisation – Arbolle – Burkina Faso
Acacia nilotica planted in 1988 with soil conditioner TerraCottem
Reforestatiion Project of the Canadian Cooperation, Committee Maastricht-Niou and TC-Dialogue Foundation
At the start of September, with the support of ACTED’s teams the refugees and local population 8,000 new acacias and leucaenas next to the Ouré Cassoni camp of Sudanese refugees, in the East of Chad, to fight against the desertification.
The camp contributes to the already precarious environmental equilibrium of this particular zone, as the presence of the refugees increases the strain on the scarce natural resources.
Since 2007, to respond to this issue ACTED has created areas of reforestation and of fixation of sand dunes, within the framework of our activities supporting the Sudanese refugees of the camp.
This project will benefit both the refugees and the autochthones. These trees resist to the arid soils and will grow over 4 to 5 years and will be taken care of by the autochthonous and refugee populations.
Source: ACTED
DESERTIFICATION 
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