Ah, the environment

I recently read a book called "The Challenge for Africa", by Wangaari Maathai. She started the Green Belt Movement, and is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. In her book, she is a strong advocate of the inclusion of the environment in development programs, and of restructuring many development programs. There was one quote that I particularly liked, discussing development in Kenya and the surrounding region:

"In these regions, concern for environmental issues is treated as a luxury. But it is not: protecting and restoring ecosystems, and slowing or reversing global warming, are matters of life and death. The equation is simple: Whatever we do, we impact the environment, if we destroy it, we will undermine our own ways of life and ultimately kill ourselves. This is why the environment needs to be at the center of domestic and international policy and practice. If it is not, we don't stand a chance of alleviating poverty in any significant way."


Today we had a 4 1/2 hour training session about the Peace Corps environmental program, and about part of what I will actually be doing for the next two years. In the past, natural resource management and agriculture were separated into two different Peace Corps sectors in Mali. Now, there is one overarching environmental program. Technically that means I am an environmental volunteer, rather than an agricultural volunteer like I first thought, but that is beside the point.

We learned a lot today about "Farmers Field Schools" (FFS), which we will probably be developing and working with once we learn the language and become integrated into our communities. The cool things about FFS is that you work together with farmers, use the knowledge that they already have, and test new ideas in small test plots. This is very different than the approach of going into a community and telling farmers that they are wrong, and should be doing things differently (as if they haven't been farming the same crops for generations). I like the FFS approach a lot better. I'll probably give more details about this in the future, so I won't go into more just yet.

Have a good week everyone!