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Community Links mark UN World Environment Day, 5 June
3 Mehef 2010For UN World Environment Day, 5 June 2010
WELSH COMMUNITY LINKS COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE IN AFRICA
Community groups in Wales are linking with groups in Sub-Saharan Africa to take initiative in combatting climate change – and developing innovative, grassroots projects with the very communities worst affected by impacts of global warming.
Lampeter and Llandrindod Wells are among many Welsh communities who are working practically towards a vision of a cleaner, greener world with partners in Kenya and Uganda, through the Wales Africa Community Links network.
Lampeter/Bore Community Carbon Link is a unique initiative that connects Lampeter and West Wales with Bore in eastern Kenya ‘through the medium of carbon’. CCL recognises that here in Wales we have a large per capita carbon footprint, and a responsibility to reduce the damage we are causing to the atmosphere. Latest research indicates that strongest climatic cooling effects are from trees and forests in tropical latitudes. The community of Bore is located on the equator and consequently an ideal place to plant trees as a ‘carbon sink’.
Lampeter is the first town in Wales to have its own dedicated plot of protected tropical forest in Africa, currently expanding from an initial 10 to 110 acres. 7,500 cashew trees have been planted and are now yielding their first harvest of nuts, providing nutrition and livelihoods for the local community. In August a team of volunteers, led by lecturers from the University of Wales, Trinity St David (formerly UW Lampeter and Trinity College Carmarthen) are going out to work with the Bore community on forest conservation and tree planting.
Ru Hartwell, of the Lampeter/ Bore Community Carbon Link said: "We only have the one atmosphere. It is thin, fragile and every year we pump 32 billion tonnes of carbon into it. This unique project shows how ordinary people in Wales can connect with their counterparts in Africa to protect the tropical forest that keeps our shared atmosphere healthy."
Llandrindod Wells are supporting Africa Greater Life Mission (AGLM) in Wakiso, Uganda. Bulabakulu Village was developed by AGLM which is led by Pastor Joshua Magezi, to house, support and educate widows and orphans, and currently supports 120 children.
Building on a biodiversity project idea developed in partnership with Makerere University, the Llandrindod Link is now in the very early stages of implementing a community forest project. Purchase and conservation of forest for the Bulabkulu community would provide a sustainable source of wood and food for the village, a buffer to the important wetland area surrounding, and a teaching and research resource for the Uganda’s Makerere University. For children in Powys schools, the link ‘makes climate change real’ through providing the opportunity to learn from African communities – and to be part of a green conversation in our world’s ‘global village’.
But the vision of Welsh people has greater sights still. Both the Lampeter and Llandrindod links are part of the developing ‘Size of Wales’ movement – a collective of Welsh communities, civil society organisations and businesses who share an ambition to work with southern partners to conserve an area of tropical forests ‘the Size of Wales’ across Sub-Saharan Africa. By next year’s UN Environment Day in 2011, Wales, it is hoped, will have an even more exciting story to tell.
Wales Africa Community Links is managed by WCVA and funded by the Welsh Assembly Government ‘Wales for Africa’ scheme.
For more information and photos, please contact Craig Owen,Wales-Africa Community Links, WCVA, Baltic House, Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff, CF10 5FH. cowen@wcva.org.uk
