TheRestorationInitiative – The Restoration Initiative

Empowering Women Through Environmental Restoration: The Restoration Initiative’s Impact

The Restoration Initiative / 24 October 2024

The Restoration Initiative (TRI) has been at the forefront of environmental restoration efforts for many years, with projects spanning far and wide across the world. TRI strives to overcome existing barriers to sustainable restoration and works to rejuvenate some of the globe’s degraded landscapes, largely through empowering local communities with a particular focus on indigenous women. Women empowerment plays an integral role in community based sustainable development, with the ability to enhance community resilience and promote gender equality. TRI’s various projects have uplifted women across the globe, recognizing the critical link between gender empowerment and environmental restoration.

Three Kalash women in traditional clothing of Indigenous Peoples of Pakistan’s Chitral region © FAO/ Faizul Bari

Tanzania: Empowering Women in Sustainable Farming

In Ilalasimba village, Tanzania, women engage primarily in subsistence farming to sustain their livelihoods. In recent years, various challenges like deteriorating soil and poor farming practices have resulted in low yields, subsequently taking a toll on the local community. Without adequate crops or cattle numbers, women have had to rely more heavily on forest resources to meet family needs.

Some of the women in Ilalasimba were also part of the community groups, such as the Village Natural Resources Committee, that make them part of the group of decision makers and drivers of restoration activities. Through this, they identified milk production as a key area of necessary support and this ensured support for the local women’s group in farming and livestock keeping as alternative and sustainable income-generating activities. To support the women’s community in Ilalasimba, TRI alongside the community groups has introduced improved cattle breeds to the village and advised subsistence farmers on how to care for and raise the livestock more effectively.… Read the rest

Uplifting Indigenous Communities Through The Restoration Initiative

The Restoration Initiative (TRI) has been pivotal in uniting people and the planet in their important environmental restoration projects. Not only focusing on mitigating land degradation, TRI has been uplifting Indigenous communities that call this land home. With extraordinary connections to the land, Indigenous peoples possess traditional ecological knowledge and practices that are critical in the fight for environmental restoration. Through their various projects, the TRI are finding a balance between actively restoring land areas while protecting local communities’ rights and livelihoods that have lasted generations.

Empowering Indigenous Communities in the Central African Republic

In the Pissa and Berberati regions of the Central African Republic, TRI projects are aiding the transition away from unsustainable farming practices in order to relieve the depletion of forest resources. The survival of local villages and indigenous groups has been based on scarce resources such as timber and wild meat, but with the help of TRI, new forms of income are being established.

With the trust of the local people, long-term solutions are being established in the form of community forests. These forests aim to give Indigenous people long-term rights to use and manage their resources, empowering sustainable practices and collaboration. Through extensive engagement with local villagers, 500 hectares of land has been mapped out for this restoration project, with the potential to improve food security, increase animal habitat, provide alternative income sources, and improve the lives of surrounding communities. Training has been provided to empower indigenous peoples, teaching the importance of land management, legal rights, and allocation of community forests. … Read the rest