The project was launched for the global climate strike day in September 2019: On the initiative of a handful of companies from the event industry, which had approached Panterito with the wish to give something back: one tree was to be planted per digital booking – but not simply as cheaply as possible, but in a meaningful context that ensures the highest possible survival rate of the seedlings. Two years and almost 10,000 trees later, it’s time for the first major assessment. What impact is the project having? Is it on the right course?

The key figures

9.800 counted trees

• 7,750 already planted (planting seasons 19/20 and 20/21)
• 3,200 currently planted (planting season 21/22)
• over 15,000 more already projected

4 planting partners

• active in Malawi, Zambia, South Africa and Indonesia
• approx. 138 people reached on site

  945 t estimated carbon sequestration

by the planted trees calculated on a lifetime of 10 years
(actual survival rates are already included as far as reported)

Additional value

• Additional income for smallholder farmers
• Training for farmers and students
• Fruits for the students
• Soil improvement of the fields and biodiversity gain

Thus, the project contributes to the following sustainability goals/SDGs:

• 4.7 and 4.a Quality education
• 8.3 and 8.4 Decent work and economic growth
• 11.7 Sustainable cities and communities
• 12.2 Responsible consumption and production
• 13.2 Climate action
• 15.3 Life on land

Our learnings in the first phase

• Due to Corona, nothing was in a state of normality among the project partners either. The school tree project in particular suffered because schools were closed during an important phase for the seedlings and replacements could not always be organized. The agroforestry projects had far fewer problems here. Despite the restrictions, training sessions were largely able to take place as planned. The conclusion here is that the more profitable a project is for the local implementers, the more likely it is that it will remain in focus even in times of crisis.
• Monitoring in particular is a challenge: every organization collects different data, and we learn that solid project monitoring is absolutely not a given. Good monitoring should be firmly planned into the process, designed to be as efficient as possible, and at the same time transparent. Here we see a construction site for us to try out and optimize.

Interview with Pam Haigh, UK General Manager of Ripple Africa

For seven years Pam Haigh has worked for Ripple Africa as one of five members of the small team based in the UK – three paid employees and the two founders. The rest of the “family”, as Pam calls them, is the 142-member operating team in Malawi. The story of Ripple Africa goes back almost 20 years to when the founders, Geoff and Liz Furber, were travelling around Africa and a wrong turn led to its creation:

The record of the interview was actually not meant to be published. But it’s so much nicer to hear Pam tell the stories than only to read the shortened version, so I highly recommend you to listen to the audio on our project page (if you can stand my uhms). 

Panterito (Kristina Huch): What was the motivation of Ripple Africa when it started and so what is the aim of the organization? 

Pam Haigh: It’s really interesting actually, because Geoff is a businessman. He has never been involved with charities until he founded Ripple Africa. He and his wife were travelling around Africa, and were in Malawi trying to find their way for a lodge to stay for the night – and they got lost. Somebody said, `it’s getting dark, there is something down the road, why don’t you go down there´. They arrived in the dark, it was literally on the shores of Lake Malawi and when they woke up the following morning, and saw the beauty of where they were, they were completely bowled away. And they discovered that this lodge was actually for sale. So, on a whim almost, they decided to buy it. But the owner had an existing arrangement with local schools for teachers to come and volunteer. And they said, `we’d like to honour that and therefore we better set up a charity so that we could do it properly´.

So, when we started up, we were really only supporting a few local primary schools. And then – as happens with most of the projects we do – you start talking to the local people, and you discover that actually there’s no secondary school within easy walking distance. And so therefore we built a secondary school, which we handed over to the government. And we then thought, there are no government preschools. So we now run eight preschools.

We then supported some of the health clinics. From there we started talking to some of the people and discovered that a lot of the issues they have are environmental issues. And so over the years we’ve become much more an environmental charity, and we mainly do that on a very large scale. But we’re still supporting the local community near our base in Nkhata Bay District. So it’s very much a mixture of different types of projects. But that makes the job so much more interesting and so much more fun.

So, it’s a very big focus on community work, and you already mentioned some advantages, being able of having so many facets of projects. What are other advantages of this approach, and perhaps what are problems? 

Every time we go over there we are usually approached by people who say `we need help with this, we need help with that´ and it’s very easy to get sucked into too many different areas and we have to be very focused, because that would take our focus to far away from the main things that we’re doing.

But because of the way we’ve grown we have got to know all levels of the community very well, so we work with everybody from the district governance people right the way down to individual villagers. And by involving all of them in everything we do, you get the buy-in of the people that really are able to help you make your projects work. And that I think strengthens what we do because we’re able then to really identify what are the real problems that are affecting people.

And our strength I think is that we come up with cost-effective and simple solutions based on what people can actually do themselves. For example our cook stoves project: we know an awful lot of organizations in Malawi who give a metal cook stove to a household and say, `there’s your cook stove and that’s gonna save you wood´. And they then walk away because most funding from organizations is only for one or two years. And often the cook stove will break or the householder will forget how to use it, and so they’ll put it to one side and go back to their traditional way of cooking on a big three stone fire, which uses huge pieces of wood.

Whereas the way we work is we sit down, and we say, `okay, what are you going to cook and how are you going to cook it and what’s important to you and let’s design something together and let’s design it out of local materials. Let’s help you to build it rather than us give you something. This is going to be yours, and you’re going to have ownership of it.

Is this what you call a charity run like a business? 

Yeah, very much so. I think a lot of charities start with the very best of intentions but don’t operate in a business-like way. So a lot of aid-funding I think is wasted. If you have a product, and you are selling a product to a customer, you have to deliver that product and the customer has to be happy with it. Then everybody is fine. But a lot of aid organizations don’t involve people in the decision-making, so it isn’t a product that they want or understand. And I think that’s the difference with us than a lot of organizations. And it means that we can do a huge amount for quite a small amount of money really.

Don’t you get problems because the effort of supporting the communities for such a long time means ongoing cost for staff?

Yeah, absolutely. And that is a problem with our funding. Because as I said before a lot of aid funding is only for one or two years. You know, we had some fantastic support from some very big trusts and foundations, but they sort of expect that after a year the problem is solved. And that patently isn’t the case.

And I think there has been a problem with a lot of organizations almost bribing people to do things. For example, we went to one particular area up in the hills around where we are with the cook stove project, and we said, `this is the cook stove, that is what we want to do´ and talked to them about it, and they said, `well, where are our free pots and pans?´ and we said, `what do you mean?´ and they said, `somebody came the other week, and they were going to give us free pots and pans with their cook stove, where are ours?´. And we said: We don’t do that. You know what you’re benefitting from is you gonna have trees on the hills around where you live rather than cut them all down for the wood. And you’ll going to save time, because you don’t have to collect all the wood. And that I think is one of the big issues really – there is an expectation that things will be given for free without them to actually invest anything themselves. And we’re trying to change that mindset really.

I have another question going in this direction. We want in our next report to include a failure report. So thinking about what did not work, identify the problems and then try to do better the next time. Could you name problems for Ripple Africa and perhaps not only for the stage you’re in now but also for earlier stages?

One of the things we are very strong about as an organization is admitting when things go wrong. One of the things that we found with the people we are working with in Malawi is they like to say yes all the time, and they like to satisfy you, and they don’t want to say anything that they think is going to upset you. So we started off by going in and saying, `how are things going?´ and they said, `oh, everything is fine´. And then we weren’t seeing that in the results that we were getting. And we’ve had to actually almost change the culture in encouraging people to admit when they’ve made a mistake and then learn from it and change what they do.

One example is when we started our Changu Changu Moto cook stove project, we wanted to have people based in local villages who are going to be coordinators who could help the householders to introduce the stoves and learn how to use them. And so we approached the local chief and said, `can you suggest a person in your village?´. And because there’s not very much employment, they were suggesting mainly young men. Now the problem with that is, a young man doesn’t do the cooking so doesn’t understand how women cook. He has just watched it from a distance and then eaten the food. So we weren’t getting that relationship building that we really needed. And we completely changed the way we did things: When we started to go into new villages we said, `can you introduce me to a woman that everybody has respect for?´. And then we went and worked with her, and she then became almost champion of the new way of cooking. But you only learn things like that by doing it wrong in the first place.

Another big problem for us all at the moment: How is Covid changing your work?

Well it’s really interesting actually, because we thought it would have a much more devastating effect than it actually has. Luckily, Malawi has had much fewer cases and I think it’s basically because first of all they have a much younger population – over 50% of the population is under the age of 18. And also they were very good at shutting down all the borders very quickly. But they are now seeing a spike in cases because of the South African variant, because a lot of Malawians travel to South Africa to earn money for their families. And they’ve come back into the country and brought the disease with them.

But Malawi doesn’t have any sort of social security system. So if people aren’t working, they starve. And so most business has carried on. And we’ve done quite a lot of work with our conservation volunteers to help spread the message about the importance of handwashing and social distancing and how to recognize the symptoms and what to do then. And mask-wearing in public is compulsory, but obviously unless you’re spotted, you get away with it. But we ask all our staff and volunteers to set a good example by wearing their masks.

But one of the interesting things is that when we started talking to the district council about Covid, one of the things we discovered  – which we didn’t realize – is how many broken boreholes there are. I think just in our district alone there were about 800 broken boreholes. Which meant that the boreholes working had a lot more pressure on them. Each borehole is on average used by 150 different people. So if you think the three around you are all broken then all of those people are using one, which exacerbates the problems of infection being spread.

So we’ve actually now moved into repairing boreholes. Which is a project that we would never have been involved in before Covid. Actually all we’re doing is providing the funding for the spare parts and the transport. Because the District Council has a team of maintenance people, whose job it is to repair boreholes, but they don’t have the money to actually buy the spare parts.

And we are now discovering that none of our local hospitals have oxygen facilities. So we have now managed to raise some funds to supply our local hospital and clinics with oxygen concentration machines which hopefully will not only help them with Covid but also for years to come. So it’s been an opportunity as well as a tragedy for us.

I was very happy when our partner Fairventures sent us the book by Sarina Albeck. What a welcome distraction and opportunity to spend a few socially distanced hours on the sunny balcony – and learn a lot in the process.

In her book Sarina approaches the questions about the causes of deforestation in Indonesia. She does this in a very personal way, starting from the feeling that we all know: it’s not good what’s happening – that should change. But what is actually happening? And why? On the one hand she is dealing the forest, but equally with the people. The following passage is freely translated from German:

There is surprisingly little space for people in our utopia. Sometimes they appear on the margins: as losers of land rights conflicts or as henchmen of corporations in the clearing of large forest areas. Or we imagine them as nomadic primitive peoples who have nothing to do with modernity. Rarely do we see them as normal people with needs and opinions, families living in towns or villages, as farmers, security guards, teachers, saleswomen, men on motorcycles, women with an annoying husband, a sick child who has to go to the doctor, people with a desire to consume (…).

Of course, I point to the point. And I am polemizing. Nevertheless, my impression is that we are allowing ourselves a too simple view of a complex topic. A simplification that is not only useless, but damaging.

The answer she presents as a consequence of her considerations revolves around the concept of Fairventures Worldwide. She portrays Johannes Schwegler, who set up the non-profit enterprise that encourages and enables small-scale farmers on the island of Borneo to plant commercial forests. Why not natural rainforest? Because it would ignore the causes.

Where there used to be rainforest, there are now many open spaces in Kalimantan. Theoretically they could be used for agriculture. Occasionally this happens, but without satisfactory results. The main reason for this is the condition of the former forest soils: they are degraded and hardly fertile anymore. (…) The Sengon is the protagonist of this story.

The Sengon is a pioneer tree – a species that grows even under unfavourable conditions and prepares the ground for other plants. In this way, the land regains its value: catch crops such as peanuts or cocoa can be cultivated. And the sengon grows so fast that it can be felled after seven to ten years.

Sarina introduces the people she has met and talks about what she has seen and how she understood it. She simplifies without becoming under-complex and brings together a variety of reality fragments from which, piece by piece, a rough picture emerges.

The 170 loosely printed pages are a very good introduction to the problems of deforestation, rainforest protection and meaningful reforestation. Unfortunately, as far as I know, not translated yet.

Sarina Albeck: Bäume für Borneo. Wie Aufforstung die indigene Bevölkerung schützt und den Klimawandel bekämpft. Oekom 2020, 19,00 €

Interview with Markus Wolff from the Remscheid Forest Cooperative on the status quo and perspective of our forest.

In many cases, private forest ownership is divided into small areas through inheritance – in the Bergisches Land on average this is less than two hectares per owner. Profitable management of this land is hardly possible anymore and therefore many forest heirs/owners look to interested buyers as a way out. Then there are, among other things, investors with clear deforestation plans because in NRW up to two hectares can be cut down without the need for a permit.

In order to prevent this and instead manage the forest sustainably, the Remscheid Forest Cooperative was founded 6 years ago. It now cultivates almost exactly 70 hectares of forest and has 232 members – more recently the Panterito Foundation.

Markus Wolff is the founder and chairman of the board of the cooperative – and at the same time he is the Head of the Remscheid City Forestry Office, because only a union makes it possible for the cooperative to do what private owners surrender to. He spoke to Kristina from Panterito about the condition and future of the forest.

Mr. Wolff, there has been a lot of media coverage about drought, forest fires, and the effects of climate change on the forest. Do you also feel this in your forest regions?

Of course. There is no forest in Germany or in Europe, which is not currently visibly or invisibly affected by climate change and is therefore also stressed.

What are the typical signs?

Decreased vitality of the trees. They are just weakened. This expresses itself in being more susceptible to harmful organisms, they lose their leaves early or, if they are a spruce or other conifers, they quickly dry and then become brown.

Although we are still relatively well off. The Bergisches Land is one of the main areas of damage in NRW. Last week I did a tour with a school class in our forest and I noticed that we are still in a comparatively good to very good position due to our forest management.

What are you doing differently?

We do not do anything differently in the forest cooperative to what we do in our urban forest – both are so-called “naturally” cultivated. These are criteria of the ANW, the Association for Natural Forestry, which, among other things, aims to rejuvenate the forest early, thereby bringing in more structure, more diversity, more mix and therefore the trees are simply more vital and resistant.

What are the biggest challenges facing the cooperative now? On the one hand, of course, adaptation to climate change, but on the other hand, there is also the question of how profitability can be achieved – or is that not the focus at all?

Of course, profitability is in a sense a black zero. In view of the fall in price of wood, this is a challenge, no question. But there are indications that the forest is increasingly coming into focus as a result of this change in overall political awareness and that we can open up new markets. That we can achieve yields for CO₂ storage, for example, or that we will be rewarded for ecosystem services in the future and for many other things where it is now being felt that we simply cannot work without or with less forest.

It was not until the end of September at the “National Forest Summit” that the Federal Minister of Agriculture, Julia Klöckner, pledged additional funds worth millions to repair the damage. It is now crucial that the urgently needed funds are used in a well-focused manner. If funds are linked to measures for ecosystem services instead of as a flat rate, they promote the conversion of industrial forests into healthy ecosystems in the long term, explains the 12-point paper from NABU, for example.