An Overview Of Our Solution
CAMGEW works in the Kilum-Ijim forest and is involved in the green value chain devlopment of Oku White Honey and Bees wax. This is to keep the forest alive and improve on forest community livelihoods. CAMGEW use apiculture to conserve the forest. This forest suffers from bushfires that destroy biodiversity while community suffer from unemployment and poverty. CAMGEW regenerate forest and train forest people in apiculture; provide them with starting beehives; organize them; provide them with apiculture material and equipment; buy their honey and wax and sale in her Bamenda HoneyShop while exporting bees wax abroad. The beehives are placed in the forest. Honey from hives is converted to money for income. This activity creates employment and community members do not burn forest and when forest bushfire occurs they stop it to defend and protect their interest.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: Africa
General Information
Organization type
Sin fines de lucro/No Gubernamental
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
200000
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
20000 ha
Production quantity
35000
People employed
2000
Solution
Describe your solution
Apiculture has been used to manage bushfire in the forest, create employment and fight poverty. Bee farmers with beehives in the forest are engage in bushfire prevention and management when it occurs. CAMGEW has trained 701 bee farmers in honey and bees wax production; organized more than 1500 bee farmers into 24 village bee farmers groups and 5 new bee farmers cooperatives; provided the cooperatives with production, harvesting, processing, storage and packaging materials; created a Honeyshop in Bamenda to convert bee farmers honey to money; created an international market to sell bees wax and encourage women in apiculture. A woman receives 2 beehives to start bee farming while men receive 1 hive from CAMGEW after training. Women are part of decision making in farmers groups and cooperatives. Bee farmers village group and cooperative leaders receive training on cooperative management, leadership, governance, law and quality control. Bee farmers receive training on traceability, honey harvesting, storage and quality control. To sustain the forest CAMGEW has planted 60500 bee loving native trees in the forest with bee farmers, trained more than 4000 youths to be nature lovers and future bee farmers, more than 2000 adults to develop friendly attitude to the forest, developed 3 tree nurseries with 200000 trees nursed for planting. CAMGEW do radio forest sensitization 2 times a week in local community radios. CAMGEW do forest patrols and identify defaulters for punishment.
Implementation
Describe your implementation
Bee farming goes with training on honey and bees wax production, quality control and marketing. Leaders of cooperatives and groups are trained on leadership, cooperative law, management and governance. Each training on production and quality takes 2 days with day 1 involve class lessons on apiculture and day 2 involve practical work on beehive construction, mounting, harvesting, honey processing and storage. Bees wax production training takes 2 days with day 1 for class lessons and day 2 for practical on bees wax extraction. Trainings on cooperative management, leadership, governance and quality control each takes 2 days bringing each cooperative leaders together. CAMGEW then buy honey from cooperatives using the rolling fund and sale in her Honeyshop in Bamenda and in BIONATCAM-a cooperative created by 4 NGOs to market their forest products in Yaounde. CAMGEW bought honey processing units, beesuits and smokers for honey harvesting, containers for honey harvesting and storage for the cooperatives. To sustain the forest CAMGEW and bee farmers planted native trees in forest for flower production for bees. Other stakeholders join tree planting like tradition to increase cultural heritage, government to improve national patrimony, water authorities to plant water friendly trees and youths to learn tree planting. Men prepared sites for planting and women carry trees to planting sites. The local radios, forest, schools and tree nurseries were used for forest education and information. CAMGEW set 3 nurseries with 200000 bee loving trees ready for planting. CAMGEW staff are field-based living and interacting with forest people on daily basis. The cooperative is owned and run by forest people for sustainability. The cooperatives have increased solidarity and participation in the community. The numbers of bushfires are reducing in 2015 there were 7 bushfires, 2016 recorded 3 and 2017 recorded 1 bushfire. Most local people do not understand English so we use local languages.
External connections
CAMGEW started work in the Kilum-Ijim forest in 2011 after winning World Bank Development competition that helped her set a tree nursery, plant 7000 trees in forest and trained bee farmers. In apiculture training, tree nursery and forest regeneration we received funds from Koning School through Both ENDS, French IUCN, Rufford Foundation, New England Biolabs Foundation, Plant A Tree in Africa, Future in Our Hands. In honey and bees wax value chain development we got funds from Bees for Development, Man and Nature, Teach a Man to Fish and MANE Fils to sale bees wax in France. Locally we work with Cameroon Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife supporting us technically, Cameroon Ministry of Livestock, Fishery and Animal Husbandry on apiculture development, Existing Oku White Honey cooperative for technical support. CBOS like BERUDA, OREP, SOPISDEW. MIVA Switzerland provided us with a TOYOTA HILUX for mobility and SWISSHAND with funds to build microcredit scheme for women in Kilum-Ijim forest as alternative source of livelihood. Students from Universities of Dschang and Bamenda for research on forest issues. Oku Community Radio, Boyo Community Radio, Kumbo City Radio, Bui Community Radio, Grassroot newspaper, Eden newspaper and facebook for education and information. We worked with primary and secondary schools in Kilum –Ijim forest area for forest education and sensitization.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
The Kilum-Ijim montane forest that occupies 20000 hectares suffers from bushfires that destroys its biodiversity every year. About half of this forest has been destroyed through burning to get farmland before Birdlife International came to rescued the forest and more than 500 hectares of forest have been lost in bushfire recently although with efforts of regeneration. These bushfires come from poor methods of honey harvesting, burning of farms and grazing lands. This is done by community members. The cutting down of fresh wood for various purposes contribute less . Bees and biodiversity are destroyed in the process. As flowers and bees reduce their duty of pollination and honey production is reduced. Animals that are involved in bee loving seed dispersal and germination (seed passing through their acidic stomach before germinating) are destroyed in bushfires. All community member can do bee farming because it is an activity that can be done together with other activities.
Describe the context in which you are operating
Many of people live on less than a dollar per day. Poverty and unemployment is high. The population is more of youths. The area is rich in natural resources to unblock to meet local needs and sustain it. The tradition of the people is strong. The area depends on the forest for water, firewood, vegetable, honey, culture, medicine, etc. 200000 people live a day’s walk to the forest. The soil is volcanic soil permitting the cultivation of potatoes, coffee, corn, beans, bananas, etc and animal rearing like goats, sheep and cattle. Apiculture can increase local income. Corn and huckleberry is staple food here. The population lack employment opportunities and depend on their entrepreneurial skills. They are organized into cooperatives. The forest has a rich herbal potential with many locally owning herbal treatment centre receiving an influx of people locally and nationally. The forest is very medicinal and its honey is special, medicinal and certified as Geographical Indication Product.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
CAMGEW has planted 60500 bee loving native trees in the forest between 2012 and 2016. CAMGEW through apiculture trained about 700 bee farmers who own more than 5000 beehives in forest with bees. Bees promote pollination that gives seeds. Bee farmers have increased and are now in cooperatives. This is fighting poverty, creating employment, increasing community solidarity and engagement in forest management. CAMGEW has done forest education for more than 4000 young persons to be future nature lovers and changed behaviour of older generation not to destroy the forest. In 2015 there were 7 bushfires in the forest, in 2016 the bushfire reduced to 3 and in 2017 only one bushfire occurred thanks to our sensitization. CAMGEW has regenerated the forest trough vegetative propagation with 2000 stems of fig tree, Schefflera and Solaneciom manni. These trees produce flowers and easily kill fern plants that prevent under growth and also serve as landing grounds for birds and habitats for animals.
Language(s)
The languages spoken around Kilum-Ijim forest area with 3 tribes are Nso, Oku and Kom languages. In villages it is tribal languages more. Other languages are English and Pidgin English in areas with mix people..
Water
The trees planted in the forest are watershed trees and the Kilum-Ijim forest is a source of water for many community water schemes. The trees will grow to increase water availability. The planted trees maintain the micro-climate of the forest and increase precipitation.
Food Security/Nutrition
The production of honey is increasing food security and honey has a high nutrition power. CAMGEW has trained 700 bee farmers who have in turn trained about 1500 others. The number of beehives are increasing the forest.
Economic/Sustainable Development
The prie of honey has increased from 2012 to 2017. In 2012 one Kilogram of honey costed 2000 FCFA, in 2013 it increase d to 2500FCFA per 1Kg, in 2014 it went up to 3000FCFA per Kg and in 2015 it was sold at 4000FCFA per Kg. CAMGEW has organized bee farmers to cooperatives that are owned and run by forest community members to gather and sale bee farmers honey. CAMGEW has 3 tree nursery to nurse and plant trees with cooperatives. CAMGEW has a honeyshop where she sale honey and honey products.
Climate
Protecting the forest through sensitization is keeping the carbon sink in it and planting 60500 trees is increasing the carbon sink that absorbs carbon di orxide from the atmosphere and fight climate change. Our action is fighting climate change.
Sustainability
CAMGEw has a rolling fund used to buy bee farmers products and sale in Bamenda and Yaounde. The bee farmers are organized into village groups and cooperatives to learn and share experience with each other and sale their products. They have their executives representing their people. The bee farmers harvest their honey and takes it to the cooperative where it is checked for quality and weighed for payment. The honey is drained by the cooperative and CAMGEW buy with rolling funds and transfer to Bamenda for packaging and sale in her honeyshop in Bamenda and BIONATCAM in Yaounde. The bee farmers are happy to plant trees in the forest and protect the forest for free because the forest will give them more honey if it is protected.
Return on investment
The investment has been heavy from all angles like forest conservation and trainings for forest communities. We have bought bee farming material for cooperatives and our aim is that we create a favourable environment for real business to take place. Let local people benefit from their natural resources with our facilitation. The conservation of the forest also has a global benefit as it fight climate change and locally providing water for communities.
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
Bee farming is practice any where globally but our method is using locally available material to construct beehives to reduce cost. Locally we have alpine and raphia bamboo and grass that we use. We can in other area use other locally available material to make beehives and adapt it to local realities. This will reduce dependency on external materials to reduce cost. You need just training. There are many areas with forest and they suffer from bushfire or other forest degradation activities. Bee farming could be a way to make local people value and manage their forest. Poverty and unemployment hit hard in many areas and apiculture can create jobs and fight poverty. We could plant trees (agroforestry) in areas with no forest and do apiculture. Bees for Development is useful, call for grants by PPI-FFEM, Trees for the Future, Man and Nature, National Ministry of Forestry/Agriculture. You can contact CAMGEW for training, search internet for seed grants with positivity and determination.