Last year Permafund funded a project in Zanzibar, Tanzania that combined a permaculture course with a mangrove restoration project. The applicants, Up with Community, demonstrated a good understanding of the ecosystem services provided by mangroves (including erosion control, flora and fauna nurseries and climate change mitigation including blue carbon). Permafund liked the integrated learning approach that combined Permaculture principles with the restoration of the natural environment.
Mangroves are particularly vulnerable to human threats including pollution, tourism, aquaculture and agriculture. Although rates of mangrove destruction have slightly declined this century their destruction will probably be complete by the end of it. Up with Community have planted 1000 mangrove seedlings in a degraded area. We are now working with them to help them succeed and see what we can learn and apply elsewhere.
Any reforestation is a fraught process that often has a high failure rate. Reasons for this include a lack of addressing the cause of deforestation (e.g. climate change, salinity levels), failure to monitor and protect seedlings and saplings (eg herbivore predation) failure to monitor and protect mature trees (e.g. from firewood collection).
We view efforts to counter this depressing scenario as particularly worthy. But we only want to support approaches that work in the applicant’s location. Six months in we’ve found that their implementation of directly planting seedlings is showing an unusually high success rate – a reported 80% compared to 20% for usual long-term survival when hand planting is used.Â
As is typical we’ve surveyed the research around the applicant’s domain of interest.
The effectiveness of mangrove restoration varies wildly. Costs can range from $65 to $810,000 per hectare! Approaches can be active (e.g. hand planting, dropping propagules from drones or planes) or passive, such as digging channels to maximise settling of floating propagules (mangrove seeds). Finding appropriate technologies for things like site analysis can quickly become complex. Big, well-funded organisations deploy experts – geologists, ecologists and hydrologists to name a few.
Up with Community lacks these resources, so Permafund is in dialogue with them about the applicability of current research (especially passive restoration – see MANGROVE ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION in GUIDE: LESSONS LEARNED) and the advisability of partnering with existing mangrove initiatives in Tanzania.
One such initiative Permafund already checked out is Blue Carbon Tanzania. While their website showcases an all-African staff and brightly clad locals planting seedlings, it fails to mention its ownership by the UAE-based Blue Carbon, a company that has drawn significant criticism from environmentalists. So we won’t be recommending that one. As I mentioned, reforestation is fraught!
Permafund uses permaculture principles to holistically assess and evaluate the projects we fund, usually on a one-off basis. We track projects and collect lessons learned which are shared with others and added to the body of permaculture knowledge.
In the coming months, we will report on the progress of Up with Community, whether more passive and holistic approaches have been incorporated and if the overall effort resulted in a successful outcome.
Your donations to Permafund make community projects like this possible so thank you very much for your support. Contributions to Permafund over $2 are tax deductible in Australia and can be made here.
Article by Jed Walker