Trees have many benefits: they harbor CO2, they create homes for wildlife, they produce oxygen and so on. That’s why each tree species deserves to be in the spotlight. Today, it’s time to introduce the Pyrus pashia.
The Pyrus pashia or the Wild Himalayan pear is native to southern Asia. The tree can grow up to 10 meters high and the wild variant generally lives for about 20 years. Its white flowers have petals of 1 to 7 centimeters and it caries oval-shaped pears.
“It’s the long term that we care for,” said M-N Keijzer. “It doesn’t make any difference if you plant trees because if it’s cut in one or two years then you’re wasting your time and money. So what we need is to grow the trees and to grow the forest so that they can absorb carbon over time and cool the planet. And so that they can restore the water cycle so that we can cool the planet. And so that they can regenerate soils, enrich biodiversity and help people have a good living.”
WeForest is fast growing international non-profit association with headquarters in Belgium and projects in Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Tanzania, and Zambia: it is demonstrating through the restoration of entire regions that well-planned reforestation can be the solution to today’s biggest challenge: global warming.
The activity is growing exponentially, and the organization is urgently looking for a part-time (80% or 60%) accountant to reinforce its central team in Brussels, Belgium.
Spikes in fire outbreaks in the Amazon are often related to increased deforestation. The Amazonian municipality of Apui, at the border of the so-called "deforestation belt", has had four times as many fire outbreaks compared to the same time last year.
Climate change, or rather climate urgency is hot: it is on the streets, it is making headlines in the press, and it was central in the last May European elections.
Being climate-conscious is no longer the prerogative of scientists and NGO’s. Everyone is asking for action, like on March 15th when our youth demonstrated in 128 countries.
The book Climate-Smart Agriculture: Enhancing Resilient Agricultural Systems, Landscapes, and Livelihoods in Ethiopia and Beyond was recently published by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) with contributing editors from WeForest, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), Oregon State University and Mekelle University.
Time to talk with Dr. Aklilu Negussie, author in some chapters of this book, editor and WeForest’s Ethiopia country director, to hear all about it!
The Africa Programme Director will coordinate and reinforce WeForest’s existing restoration activities in the region and focus on developing new project opportunities. We currently have a strong presence in Ethiopia (3 projects) and Zambia (2 projects), we are scaling-up in Tanzania, and we are starting a new project in Malawi.
The Asia & Latin America Programme Director will coordinate and reinforce WeForest’s existing restoration activities in the regions and focus on developing new project opportunities.
The Quality and Planning Director is a cross-project position, providing technical leadership and coordination of operations strategic planning, processes & tools to strengthen and develop our existing and future projects.
PLEASE NOTE:
Applications will only be treated if sent via the following channel, contact via the following email.
Marie Noelle Keijzer, CEO of WeForest and Peter Kanowski, Professor of Forestry at the Australian National University comment on the Australian ABC radio about Ethiopia planting more than 350 million trees in ONE day! Listen to the interview here.
The evergreen African Wild Olive grows in the Afromontane forests in Sudan, Somalia, Eastern tropical Africa, up to South Africa. She prefers the drier highland forests between 1250 to 3000 meters above sea level. With its many branches and rounded crown, it grows between 5 to 15 meters tall, often next to the Juniperus (the East African pencil cedar).
In Tigray, Ethiopia, this tree is mostly distributed as a relic tree in monasteries, villages, churches and in Afromontane natural forests.
Agriculture is one of the main pillars for the Brazilian economy: 25% of the GDP over the past two decades was made up by agriculture and animal husbandry. Furthermore Brazil is the fourth largest food producer in the world and ranks as the number one crop producer (such as soy, sugarcane and maize). However, it seems like these numbers go hand in hand with Brazil being a large deforester.
WeForest is looking for an experienced Finance and Administration Director, who will be responsible for all financial and related administrative matters of WeForest Ethiopia and will support the Ethiopian team in facilitating the country forest and landscape restoration program. Read the job description below.
WeForest is looking for an experienced project manager to develop, implement and monitor forest restoration and livelihood projects in Desa’a.
Read the job description below.
"You can say that an activity will provide income, but it’s more meaningful to try to understand how much income will be generated in a given period for how many people or households – it involves disaggregating a single variable into its constituent parts, and the parts are usually very quantifiable" - Yvonne Tamba from the Land Health Decisions team (ICRAF).
In celebration of International Women´s Day, we would like to share the stories of the real change-makers in the field: the women across our project sites in Brazil, Zambia, India, and Ethiopia that have chosen to become independent, to try new things, follow training and train others and above all: the ones that have decided to make a change, for climate, their families, their country and the world.
Read some of their stories in this Exposure Campaign we created especially for this day!
More and more, we get questions like: What is the connection between soils, forests and climate change? What do forests under the ground? What role do soils have in combatting (or contributing to) climate change and are our actions helping or hindering this?
To answer these questions, we need to start with the central theme; carbon.
The Brazilian Forest Code, first introduced in 1934 (with changes in 1965 and 2012) aims to protect rivers, soils and forests in private lands (or farms) in Brazil, and requires that some landowners have 20% of their lands covered by forests. Nowadays, 21 million hectares officially fall under this law, and if they were actually all restored, an estimated 9 gigatons of CO2 would be sequestered from the atmosphere.This equals the total emissions from China over the entire last year!
During COP24 in Katowice, Poland, end of last year, it once again was discussed how to deal with an ever growing and demanding global population in an increasingly stressed environment.
Taking into account the mitigative benefits of forest maintenance and of reforestation the question seems logic: why is forest cover reducing and not expanding every year?
This synergy of growth and potential between reforestation, business and investors and customers is real, somewhat like the ‘three-legged race’ often played by children...
The theme of this year´s Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in Bonn was´Connecting for impact´. Connecting people from across the world and across sectors - government, NGO’s, research, policy, business, finance, community, youth and indigenous organisations, is vital to reach the goal of sustainable landscapes together.
A special focus was placed on business and finance sectors and how they can and should support efforts to tackle land degradation and poverty.
