Community Engagement
At LEAF we are interested in integrated approaches to conservation, which involves looking at a complex web of interactions between societies, ecosystems and the environment. We want to restore and protect diverse, resilient ecosystems that have the potential to store carbon and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
In the past, international conservation efforts have been criticised for marginalising local communities, thus community engagement has become a focus for international organisations, and it is crucial to local success. There are a multitude of nuanced factors that come into play when considering community engagement that vary between different communities. For example:
· How can long-term goals be successfully fostered in poor communities where many aspects of living are a day-to-day struggle?
· How can we protect forests without withholding essential resources on which local communities depend?
· How do we achieve our aims without encroaching on local traditions and culture?
Our aim at leaf is not just to support local communities, but to empower local communities. To catalyse long lasting, mutually beneficial changes towards sustainable livelihoods and natural resource use.
How can we do this?
Provision of services & sustainable economy
Providing a basic level of essential services, such as health care, education and livelihood programmes is a good step towards gaining community trust and improving community wellbeing. Helping to ease the stresses of everyday life can help open up conversations about long-term goals and the benefits of restored or intact ecosystems.
The appropriation of livelihood programmes is very area specific, but shade grown crops such as coffee and cocoa can provide income and combat clearing of forests for agriculture, and carbon credits are another financial incentive for standing forests.
Growing the local economy is an important part of maintaining services such as healthcare and education, and while we seek to employ local staff, it is important that the whole community has the opportunity to benefit.
2. Natural resource management
Education and training surrounding natural resource management only serves to further benefit communities. This is the look to the long-term. Well implemented agroforestry provides a wealth of opportunities for people and nature alike. Areas of forest can be set aside for growth and extraction of natural resources, while acting as a buffer which protects interior forest. The same premise can be applied to traditional hunting, where the protected areas of forest act as a wildlife bank the supply hunting zones as animal numbers increase.
For many communities, these practices will not be considered new, they are practiced by indigenous peoples across the globe, but in many areas they have been lost. We hope that restoration of these ancestral practices can help to preserve the natural world and with it the diverse cultures and traditions that we as human beings derive from it.
Join LEAF on our mission
By engaging with local communities and encouraging their stewardship of natural habitat we give forests and local communities a boost. Forests provide food, shelter and income for millions of people around the world, and without these forests the communities will not survive.
By supporting LEAF you are battling poverty, the climate crisis, mass extinctions and cultural extinctions!
We need your energy and enthusiasm, your small donation could plant a tree, support a community, protect a forest or save a species from extinction.
Follow us on social media and join the LEAF today and let’s make some future forests together.