A shea value chain created around a protected areas landscape in Ghana led to greater finance flowing into community and conservation. Mole National Park is a biodiverse ecosystem, and Ghana’s largest protected area. Communities surrounding the Park benefit from its natural resources, but were using them unsustainably. In 2008, A Rocha Ghana and IUCN Netherlands Committee implemented a Community Resource Management Area (CREMA), a governance and management framework created by the Wildlife Division of the Forestry Commission, to empower local communities for natural resource management. Inhabitants designed a shared plan for the landscape that simultaneously addresses conservation and socio-economic wellbeing, including building a shea value chain.  Implementing organisations engaged with the Savannah Food Company to become a business partner with the CREMAs, particularly women’s groups who collect shea nuts, and help create a fund to support conservation action in the community.

La buena gobernanza depende de una gestión eficaz en el aprovechamiento de los recursos a través de los diferentes usos de las plantas. El uso ceremonial, ritual o medicinal es parte del proceso de toma de decisiones en el manejo del territorio y de los ecosistemas en la Reserva de la Biósfera Selva El Ocote. Aquí, las mujeres han tenido un rol fundamental en el rescate y transmisión de los saberes de la herbolaria, uno de los principales recursos terapéuticos en el medio rural. Asimismo, se ha promovido la participación e intercambio de experiencias entre hombres, mujeres, jóvenes y adultos mayores, reconstruyendo y rescatando el conocimiento tradicional medicinal e histórico de las propias comunidades y revalorizando los servicios ambientales.

Se ha logrado replicar este conocimiento, lo que ha redundado en un gran apoyo social y económico, especialmente en este tiempo tan difícil que nos toca vivir, el de la pandemia del COVID-19.

Mama Fatuma, the hard working middle aged woman living in Kibuyuni Village of Kwale County embodies the success of seaweed farming on the Kenyan coast. In a village where the predominant economic activity of fishing is a preserve of the men, Mama Fatuma encouraged fellow women to embark on seaweed farming as an alternative economic activity to wean them off over-reliance on their men folk and to enable them contribute to the family income. Following research trials and support from various sectors, seaweed farming is now earning Kibuyuni Village over USD 11,000 from the initial USD 2,000 in 2012 and beginning to thrive in various places along the south coast of Kenya and improving livelihoods through provision of additional income for families to pay school fees, meet medical costs and diversify the economy. It has also generated interest in mariculture and marine science generally among the youth in coastal Kenya.

The Centre for Environmental Justice and Development (CEJAD)aims to combat plastic and waste pollution by promoting sustainable solid management through public education on impacts of plastics to the environment and demonstration of BATs/BEPs such as source separation of waste, reuse, recycling and recovery as well value chain efficiency.

The project seeks to conduct the following activities:

• Equipping the women artisans with machinery, tools, and equipment for making sculptures and items out of plastic waste.
• Training women artisans on product development and packaging.
• Establishing a pilot waste segregation at source and management system for recovery, reuse, and recycle of plastic and other waste.
• Training women artisans on marketing and how to maintain market linkages.
• Undertaking a market research for their products.