Earth Today | Farmers build climate resilience with EU, Forestry support

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU), through a partnership with the Government of Jamaica, via Jamaica’s Forestry Department, has been funding 46 projects to improve Jamaica’s climate resilience.

The subprojects are under the three-year Budget Support for Improved Forest Management for Jamaica project. Two such subprojects are located in the forested communities of Crofts Hill and Ward Hill in Clarendon, where agriculture is the primary source of income.

Despite agriculture being integral for the communities, they have experienced significant degradation due to improper farming practices, mining and tree felling. Under the EU-funded projects, farmers are playing their part in restoring the forested areas through improved techniques, sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practices.

In Ward Hill, for example, farmers from the Morant farmers group have been trained to use apiculture and agroforestry to maintain a balance between the forest ecosystem and the community. Alvin Smith and Hensley Golding are beneficiaries of the project.

They have acknowledged the importance of the balance between communities and forests and have welcomed the project as a good initiative that will help to sustain their watershed areas.

“The people from the forestry department came, and they enlightened us that slash and burn, we mustn’t do it. Even in our homes we mustn’t do any burning because it is one of the things that spoil up the environment,” said Smith.

He added that they have also changed the way they dispose of garbage to protect the vegetation and waterways.

Noting that they did not know apiculture before the training phase of the project, the farmers say they now have a better understanding of the connection between apiculture, agroforestry and the preservation of forested areas in their communities.

In rural communities like these, it is common practice to cut trees for charcoal or other purposes. Project participants say community members now want to learn more about earning while keeping the forests alive.

Over in Crofts Hill, a greenhouse project has allowed for diversified farming near forested areas without negatively affecting the biodiversity.

“When you have more trees, we get more rainfall, and the rainfall will increase the output of the vegetable seedlings we are currently producing in the vegetable nursery,” noted Carlene Johnson, one of the beneficiaries.

Attaché and programme manager with the EU, Stefano Cilli, said the projects within the Morant and Crofts Hill farmers’ groups are only one component of the Improved Forest Management for Jamaica Action Plan. The project has, in fact, three areas of focus, notably:

1. reversing forest degradation, deforestation and loss of forest biodiversity through conservation and sustainable forest management;

2. strengthening the legislative, policy and institutional framework of the sector; and

3. enhancing economic, social and environmental benefits of forests through the sustainable utilisation of forest resources.

“Jamaica is covered for more than a third of the national surface by forest. Therefore, it is important to preserve them and to manage them well in a sustainable way,” he said.

For this reason, he said, the projects, which are in line with the EU’s Development Agenda for Change, also look at modernising legislation, diminishing the pressure on the forest, reforestation, and afforestation with particular attention to native Jamaican species and providing forest management tools such as a mangrove atlas.