Sustainable Use of Forest Resources

In Mali prefecture Guinea the small farmers face challenges such as drought poor soil pests and poor quality of agricultural materials leading to small crops, high level unemployment deepening absolute poverty and food shortage, and the region's desolation . In addition a warming climate is changing crop conditions and results which requires the development of agricultural methods. The project's aim is to strengthen long term human security and resilience of the rural communities in the face of unstable envi ronmental and economic circumstances. The main goal of the project is to improve local livelihood strategies and food security by increasing equality self-sufficiency ownership and planning in the villages. The aim is to approach the project's target in a holistic way in which the communities' social human ecological and economic capital are strengthened in diverse ways: 1) by carrying out a baseline study and scrutinizing the causes of malnutrition among women and children (food quality sufficiency equal d istribution and storing), 2) by developing innovative agricultural and forestry methods to be adapted in local conditions, these methods will be gathered into a good practices resource bank, 3) by creating conditions for collective action such as co-operat ives and food groups, 4) by offering material assistance to implement the activities, 5) by organizing multidisciplinary training to support the activities. By increasing community resources and collective action together with training poverty and local c onflicts can be alleviated. The special aim is to improve the employment of women and the children's living conditions. The project continues many activities that have been implemented in the previous project such as regeneration of natural resources and b enefiting from their environmental resources and knowhow. The previous project focused on environmental protection which has improved the land productivity. The central principle in the continuation project is to address the connection between environmenta l protection and food security of which importance has been observed in the Mali villages. The aim of the project is also to create new practices based on the existing ones. The new practices include collective action groups (co-operatives unions food grou ps) and the generation of a regional resource bank of which livelihood methods can benefit the villages in the long-term.