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Niger Acacia Community Plantations
Biodiversity
The acacia plantations will be developed on deforested lands with less than 5% tree cover, which are currently completely degraded and unfit for either agricultural activity or grazing. The Acacia Senegalensis is one of the most robust species in the Sahelian Belt with an exceptional potential to thrive in very harsh ecological conditions, while simultaneously restoring degraded ecosystems. The plantations will start a virtuous cycle helping to restore the local ecosystem and biodiversity. The pilot phase has successfully developed 1200 ha of such plantations in the area, and has also witnessed a progressive return of wildlife once the trees were developed enough and fencing was eliminated. The trees will provide natural habitats and shadow for bees, birds, small animals. Additionally, the sustainable management of the plantations will also provide fuelwood that will help reduce the pressure on the existing natural forest.
The new forest will be created by the propagation of cuttings, which will avoid any negative effect on the native tree population. These cuttings will be obtained from phenotypically selected seedlings to ensure significant genetic variation.
Other Environmental Benefits and Risks
Acacia Senegalensis is a multi-purpose tree, and using it for reforestation in a sustainable framework will provide several additional environmental benefits.
The powerful rooting system of the trees will improve dune-fixing, and will also help reduce erosion in conjunction with the improved agriculture methods. Being leguminous plants, they will enhance nitrogen fixation in the soil. Their cover will increase shade and serve as windbreaks for crop land, and leaves falling each year as part of the life cycle of the trees will also fertilize the soil. The soil regeneration in turn will provide more grass and animal fodder, and raise the water table. The development of intercropping will provide extra income to project participants but also help regenerate the ground with nutrients. Finally, the plantations will improve the landscape.
The majority of the proposed planting falls under the framework of the World Bank Niger Community Action Program (CAP Niger). The monitoring of the project's environmental impacts will therefore be integrated in its monitoring plan. These efforts will be more easily replicated elsewhere once the project has proven successful. In particular, as local communities become more experienced with the plantations, they are expected to expand their reforestation efforts.
Socio-economic benefits and risks
Several hundreds of jobs, permanent and temporary, will be created on the ASI plantations for their management and the production, transport, and selling of Arabic gum. In addition, the management of ASI's nurseries will create about 200 jobs. About 10,000 farming families are expected to benefit from the second part of the project. They will be given the possibility to manage their own acacia plantations, about 30-40 ha per community.
Communities will derive direct benefits from Arabic gum sales to which ASI will commit. Additional benefits will come from the reintroduction of agriculture through intercropping with groundnuts, cowpeas, and other local crops, which will be developed at the start of the rainy season. Finally, forage from leaves and seeds and the sustainable production of fuel wood will help improve local livelihoods. These additional benefits are likely to exceed direct income from the plantation. At the national level, the sale of Arabic gum will also provide an additional inflow of foreign exchange.
Both ASI and ICRISAT will be heavily involved in training local communities to better manage their Acacia plantations and produce high quality Arabic gum. Training will cover basic agricultural techniques, possibilities for inter-cropping, correct pruning of trees and proper gum searing and sorting techniques.
All these benefits will be ensured and formalized through a contractual relationship between ASI and each community. The contractual relationship will include the supply of farmers with acacia seedlings of improved quality, the purchase of additional biomass from tree pruning and the administration and payment to local farmers of their share of revenue from the sale of temporary CERs. ASI will therefore have a strong economic incentive to ensure that training is adequate and extensive as this will improve the quality of Arabic gum it has committed to purchase. This training will also ensure the transfer of know-how and create a more favorable basis for long-term income growth.
Rural communities will be involved as part of the World Bank Niger CAP program, which has its own criteria for selecting participants. The community input process and monitoring of social benefits and potential risks will also be managed and taken into account by the World Bank Niger CAP program, which is based on a very participatory approach. This approach is meant to empower local communities by allowing them to express their own development priorities. Significantly, the project will need to be approved by the local communities participating before becoming operational.
Leakage
The Project will be implemented on lands currently unsuitable for any economic activity and only covered at 5% by trees. These areas do not serve as source of fuelwood either. The project will therefore not cause any resettlement of populations and will on the contrary provide employment locally and likely to reduce migrations. Farmers outside the areas to be replanted under the projects are expected to progressively start their own replanting of Acacia Senegalensis by getting improved seedlings from project-induced modern nurseries. Therefore the project is not expected to cause any leakage.
Risk of Non Permanence
Premature tree harvesting or land conversion represent potential risks to the permanence of the project. They, however, are rather unlikely. Local communities will have a financial interest to continue with the plantations as they will provide them with a steady revenue stream from Arabic gum through the purchasing agreement with ASI. Acacia plantations will also become more and more arable for intercropping, providing another durable source of income. These benefits significantly exceed the economic benefits of prematurely harvesting trees for firewood. Communities will be made aware of this fact through training and know-how provided by ASI, which will also provide them with the tools to maintain them.
In addition, the World Bank CAP consultation process will ensure that land tenure rights are well established for all plantations to be managed by local communities.
Risk from overgrazing will only be significant at the beginning of the project, and fencing will be employed to control it. Risk of fire will be mitigated by keeping a non-cultivated buffer zone around the plantations. In addition, local communities will be involved and provide safekeepers to patrol the plantations.
Additionality
The land devoted to the project is completely degraded, so that neither agricultural nor grazing activities are possible. At this stage, the re-growth of even the most resistant plants is hampered, and the land is economically unusable. Except for acacia and its exceptional qualities, there is no other tree plantation we are aware of currently offering a feasible economic alternative. More broadly, no such project has successfully taken place in Niger or neighboring countries over the last 20 years. Past experience has also demonstrated that local communities on their own have not been able to successfully develop and manage Acacia plantations.
The pilot phase, operated without external funds, showed a limited financial return. However, this lack of profitability mainly came from the low quality of Arabic gum being produced, due notably to the lack of capacity of local populations and personnel. Additional financing will therefore be necessary to allow ASI to expand existing acacia plantations and offset the additional costs associated with providing training, maintaining a high quality nursery and transferring other know-how to local farmers. Carbon finance will also provide an important complementary source of income to local communities, particularly during the first few years of the project, when the Acacia trees are not yet producing Arabic gum.
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