A forest is not just a collection of trees. It involves the wildlife that makes it their home. It is habitat for insects and other life that it nourishes with its leaves, bark and groundwater. Forests provide not only shelter, but also livelihoods to humans. Agness Chinyama knows this well. She is working with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to protect forest ecosystems across three (3) countries in Southern Africa.
Agness first discovered the knowledge resources of the African Forest Forum (AFF) when she worked with the Zambia Forest Service. Then, she was a dedicated tree hugger, resisting any attempts to degrade or encroach on the nation’s forests. But what she learned from the AFF caused her to look at the forests from a different perspective. “Generally, you would be thinking as a forester, you shouldn’t enter the forest, you shouldn’t cut down trees. But then from the community livelihood aspect of it, the aspect of the actual need that is there, rather than the policy and the legal framework that is in place, and that needs to be enforced.”
She has seen the Zambian government start a Ministry of Environment and Green Economy, that she hopes will make a real impact on national policy. Agness has seen many governments come and go, gazetting forests to keep them preserved, and then de-gazetting them when industry or agriculture or wealthy citizens needed the land. But she is optimistic that as AFF and other organisations train activists to negotiate, better policies are on their way.
Agness sees the need for both local grassroots organisations to spring into action, and bigger, more established NGOs, like the WWF, who she currently works for. She says that the AFF often provides the connection that brings these types of groups together, to work in tandem to affect policy making on a local, national and international level.
Information sharing, supported strongly by African Forest Forum, has allowed Agness and her counterparts from other countries to learn from each other’s experiences. That has come into play in the WWF project Agness is working on. “Some of this deforestation is being driven by different things in different countries. And, so it started getting me thinking, one, that different forest types, perhaps in addition to needing different management practices, need different planning methods and different management methods as well.”
By sharing knowledge, recognising the forests’ effects on a wide range of organisms and communities, and doing what is right for the nation’s future, Agness and other activists like herself will make an impact. And the African Forest Forum will be right there with them, providing information, networks and training to help Zambia and many other countries in Africa to look after their forests’ future