How We Grew It: At Ecological Balance Cameroon, We Brought Back Forests, Groundwater and Birdlife To Our Villages

Limbi Blessing Tata, founder of Ecological Balance Cameroon, on using Japanese forest restoration techniques to solve a local water crisis in Cameroon while creating over 1,000 jobs

Living without running water in Nkambe, Cameroon

Many homes in Nkambe don't have running water. You don't have water that flows in your kitchen or in your toilet. It doesn't exist. All water that homes use has to be fetched either from a public tap or from a stream.

On a normal day, the taps are very crowded. If you have an appointment for 8:00 a.m., by 4:00 a.m. at the latest, you should be at the tap already in order to make up for an 8 a.m. appointment. People tend to prefer to go more to the streams, but the problem is the streams are not treated. In the heart of the dry season, sometimes you have to walk up to a kilometer to be able to get a stream that is "clean". Yes, that's clean in quotes.

This is the water situation in Nkambe as we speak. It's been this way since I was a child. I'm over 40 now, and it's still a problem.

I grew up in the northwest region of Cameroon, born and bred there, in a very nature-connected community. We depended on nature for everything. If you're sick, you know where to find first aid. If you're hungry, we know where our farms are. We depended on nature for everything.

How disappearing forests taught me about water scarcity

It came from my experience when I was growing up. We noticed that as the forests were moving further away from where we lived, the streams were also moving further. It was a very simple observation.

There was a stream that was really nearby, close by, and as many people came to the community, that stream dried up and you had to go farther to fetch water. It was a very simple childhood thing. I noticed as the forest moved further away, rivers and streams also seemed to move with them.

At the time, I didn't understand. I didn't have any kind of scientific knowledge. I couldn't really explain. But I just noticed that there's something about forest that it has a correlation somehow with water.

I had the opportunity to go to university, which was rare for people from here at the time. When I graduated, I wanted to work in conservation. I began to notice two major schools of thought. There was the school of thought of the development experts, and to them, nothing should stop development. It is okay to bring down a forest, even if it's 100 hectares, because of a football field, because of anything at all.

And there was another school of thought, the school of thought of the strict conservationists, the people who say don't touch nature, don't even go there, just leave it the way it is.

That was kind of strange and funny for me because that was not where I was coming from. I came from a community where we depended on and took care of nature, and nature on its end also took care of us. It's like you have to choose sides. You have to be either for development or for conservation. I was not comfortable with any of the sides. I thought that conservation and livelihoods are not supposed to be mutually exclusive. I still hold that thought still today.

Confronting illegal loggers protecting 'zebra wood' in Cameroon

Before I started Ecological Balance Cameroon, I worked with another NGO, and I had a personal experience with illegal logging because we were working to protect a species that is critically endangered. It is endemic to a very small location in Cameroon and therefore it is critically endangered. The scientific name is Microberlinia bisulcata and locally we call it the zebra wood. The stripes of a zebra, that's how the wood is, stripey.

The forestry guys, they call it the cocaine of the forest. When the demand comes, illegal loggers will do anything for it because it has such a good price.

There's a network of informants in the communities and you can get a call from them at any time. You can get a call in the middle of the night and somebody is doing something. You have to get to forestry and you have to be on the field as at the earliest. It's very stressful because you cannot dare to go there on your own.

Even with the forestry guys and rangers, you wouldn't want to go there with just one person or just two. These guys are ready to kill. Some are on substances. It's just a chaotic situation. It's not just about who is investing in illegal logging, it's also about the people who are getting petty jobs like the carriers, the guys that are doing the sawing, the cutting down of the trees. Everybody is very protective of their job. Everybody is very protective of how much they will pay them. There is danger everywhere.

We had a serious confrontation. We had to call backup, the police. It was a crazy situation. This was in my previous job, at Ecological Balance Cameroon we are not working directly on illegal logging because I feel that my team, we still don't have the resources, we still don't have the capacity. You can’t confront illegal logging without the very heavy involvement of the Ministry of Forestry or the authorities.

Discovering the Miyawaki forest method in Kerala, India

In 2018, I was in Kerala in India on a scholarship, the Kanthari scholarship. I met a guy, his name Shubhendu Sharma. At the time, he was building a couple of Miyawaki forests across communities in India.

I think first someone found his video on YouTube, his video on a TED talk on YouTube, and they said, "oh look at this guy, he's doing something interesting with forest". I was lucky enough to meet him in person and then he explained, talked about the method.

I had not heard about the method before then and I had to do a lot of research. I did a lot of research after my meeting with him. I found a lot of fascinating stuff about the Miyawaki method, but then two things stood out for me.

The fact, the success rate, the fact that Miyawaki forests register up to 82% forest success rate irrespective of soil or climatic conditions. To me that was amazing because I'm coming from a background where you will hardly find above 30% success rate of restoration project before then.

Again, there is something that is said, it says the method recharges groundwater 30 times more than monoculture. I think that's where the click was. The fact that that method recharges groundwater.

When I began to understand and dissect the method vis-à-vis our natural forest in Cameroon, I came to the realization that all primary forests, like forests that are untouched, are Miyawakis. I'm talking about the Cameroonian experience now.

Our forests are very native. That is what Miyawaki says. The forest should be native. Our forests are very diverse. You have forest of maybe up to 500 species per hectare, 500 different species of trees per hectare. Our forests are very dense, over 7,000 trees planted per hectare. And you have large numbers of animals, insect, everything within that forest ecosystem. The forest, the soil is very rich in nutrients. These are all things that I saw in my research on the Miyawaki forest.

I cannot say for sure how our forests gained these characteristics. I don't know if they just developed by chance over time. What the Miyawaki method does is replicate this intentionally. You're putting all of this in from the onset. You don't let the forest do it, or time do it, or chance do it.

For me, it was like, wow, we have been sitting on Miyawaki forests, but we didn't realize this was the correct approach.

Founding Ecological Balance Cameroon as a single mother

In August 2016, I was working for an NGO. It was not really planned per se, but something pushed me. I wouldn't know what, maybe a divine hand. In August, I resigned. By December, Ecological Balance Cameroon was registered.

I wanted to prove that conservation and livelihoods can work hand in hand. That's the reality I came from.

At the time, I was a single mother. I had just moved out of my family's house. I had just resigned from my job. So I didn't have a steady source of income. The bills were coming at me crazy. Very stressful. When you don't know where your next paycheck, income is coming from, it's stressful.

I started with just an internet stick, a laptop, and I remember I had a spot in the sitting room at that time. I started searching for, writing proposals and submitting them like I had gone out of my mind. There were no deep thoughts. There was no clear strategy. There was not even a clear road map. The desire was just to get funding and get this thing started to prove that it is possible to have conservation and livelihoods working hand in hand.

Writing grant proposals 18 hours a day with no funding

Lots and lots of proposals, grant proposals written and sent. Even for those that Cameroon were not eligible, I filled them out and I sent them out. I was sending over 15 proposals in a week. Crazy stuff. Some I don't think were even good enough. Some were just maybe not just in line, like some stuff that you are not even qualified for, but I was still sending them, filling them.

I think at that time I was working up to 18 hours a day. Crazy, crazy, crazy.

The bills almost killed me. I had a little child and I had to pay the bills, the house rent, the this, the that. I was a single mother just moved out of the family house.

I almost gave up at a point.

How a £5,000 Rufford Grant launched our first project

Our first funding, £5,000, came from the Rufford small grant. That was the breakthrough, I would say.

It was like, wow, finally something is right. The amount, £5,000, maybe doesn't sound like big money to people that have strong currencies, maybe if you are in the UK or South Africa, that is not a lot of money. But for us, £5,000 was like; oh my, is this a dream?

That was the validation, the biggest validation.

When the £5,000 came, it dawned on me that, okay, maybe this is right. I don't know if it hadn't come, I don't know what would have happened, but it did come.

Our first project with the Rufford funding was mangrove restoration in southwest Cameroon. From there, we worked on training women on non-timber forest products and sustainable agriculture to address the slash-and-burn farming that drives deforestation.

The first Miyawaki forest we planted came later. It was 200 square meters, 600 trees. Not a very large catchment. Coming from nature, I understand that with nature sometimes you have to be patient. This first forest was funded by SUGi and they have funded 5 out of 9 miyawaki forests, including the Nkambe River Revival Forest Project

Village chiefs are needed to protect our new forests

We work very closely with the traditional council to make sure restoration works. The biggest resistance comes from people living around catchment areas and wetlands. They have a special advantage in the dry season: they can produce vegetables and crops that people elsewhere can't produce. That's a major source of livelihood.

They're not willing to let go of that land. We talk about water, the importance of water. They're still not willing. Most times, the council has to come in with an injunction, with an order. There has to be enforcement.

We've even had situations where we planted trees, and you come back a week later and they've been uprooted. That level of resistance exists.

Before any project begins, we meet with the chief and his council. We do our research first. We know who is involved and when the council meets to discuss village matters.

We prepare a file with the project document, brochures, everything. They permit us to talk, but you cannot talk for too long. You just hit the highlights. This is who we are. This is what our goals are. This is the project we're doing. This is how we think the chief and council can help.

They ask a few questions, then we leave the file with them. Later, we get feedback on what they've discussed.

The question in some places has always been: we've trusted people in the past who presented very good paperwork, but they didn't do the work they said they would do. So how do we trust you?

In Nkambe, it was not difficult because I'm a daughter of the soil. It was easy. They said, okay, we know her. Go home, go and relax. It is done.

But in other areas, it's not like that. They have to check back. Where have you worked before? Then they get back to you to say, okay, we think we can work with you.

Teaching communities about groundwater, not just taps

When we talk with communities, they're always talking about access. We don't have a public tap. So we bring them back to the fact that if water is not available in the aquifers, even if there are taps, they will not be flowing.

We show them the example of other towns like Buea, where our head office is. You have a lot of taps that have not been flowing for the past 2, 3 years. Water has not come out.

We're working on the emotions, on the fact that people have lived this. We tell them: you are paying attention to the wrong thing. Begin from availability. Then it will be easy to get access.

The truth is people are more interested in water projects. They want you to help them build a water tank and build a tap. They're more interested in that than trees. They're not really seeing, what is there about trees?

We take them back in time. We have old people within the communities and we ask them, in 1980, what was the water situation? They'll begin to tell you, this river you're seeing now, it was five times more than what it is.

We begin from history. We come to the present and we try to do a projection of the future. If you don't take care of availability, even when there's access in the future, the access will be there, but the availability will prevent it.

Water storage tanks rising after just two years

Within 2 years we were already getting amazing results. We work with the water management committee because we want to see results in the water. They reported to us that they had noticed a significant rise in the community's storage tank.

Within just 2 years, for me that was like, wow, we didn't expect this within this short period of time. That was the trigger to say, okay, this really is something big.

They had to pipe water to a new neighborhood. We saw the direct links from forest to water supply to the community piping water to a new neighborhood. For us, that was a very big result.

Our first Miyawaki forest was planted in August 2019. Our second forest was planted in March 2020, and it became a bird heaven.

These are areas we've always passed. It's not far. We just know the place. But after we planted the forest, we found there were a lot of birds. A lot and lot and lot of birds. In fact, so many birds they were almost becoming a nuisance!

For me, something had shifted. Even with my little knowledge of birds, I know that birds are like the spies of the environment. When something goes wrong, they leave, even before humans notice that something is wrong with the environment.

For us to have seen birds come, it was like, okay, I think there's something we are doing right here. That's what gave us the courage to say, okay, we want to go large scale.

For all of our forests, we have registered at least an 80% success rate.

Creating 1,000 jobs through community forest nurseries

We have employed over 1,000 people since November 2023, both part-time and permanent. We have permanent nursery attendants making sure the nurseries are doing well, and people who come in for labor-intensive activities like seed counting, constructing nursery beds, filling poly bags, and fire tracing.

We have a network of seed collectors. Because we're known in the communities, somebody can walk in anytime with seeds to sell to us.

We've trained women and youth on how to transform forest products into finished goods. Honey harvesting. Forest spices. They dry it, package it beautifully, and sell it.

Some have started businesses. We've helped create seven. One is a sustainable packaging business. Along the line we found out that one of the main challenges was packaging. You have crazy, crazy plastic pollution.

When we're training our people, we talk to them about environmental responsibility. It's not enough to just make money. You must look out for your environment.

They came back to us to say, we want to look out, but we don't have a choice other than to use plastic. We brought in 15 youth and trained them on sustainable packaging with paper, with stuff that doesn't pollute and can decompose over time.

How tree planting became community celebration

Tree planting is done strictly by volunteers. We pay people for land preparation, but tree planting is a community event.

Some transport trees from nurseries by car, then by head loads where the road ends. You have people doing transportation. Another set doing planting. Children picking up the poly bags so we don't pollute. We send the poly bags to the ministry of environment for recycling. Young people doing preliminary fencing to keep out cattle.

We provide vehicles, food and water. It's just a time of celebration. The community comes together. The chief, the Divisional Officer, the farmer, everyone is on ground. We've had military guys passing by say, oh, okay, me too, let me pay my dues to the environment, and they're planting.

Three lessons for anyone starting conservation work

First, don't rely solely on the charity model. It's not very sustainable. In 2020, funding that was committed to us was pulled overnight for COVID. I had projects on the way, people looking up to me. I wouldn't recommend anybody work solely with a charity model. Have at least two, three, as many ways as possible of getting money.

Second, do not rush the way I did. Have a clear strategy. Money will come for sure. Have a team, a basic team. It could just be you and two others or you and another person. At the beginning I was too ambitious. There was a time when I was almost overwhelmed. I was doing everything from website to running to the field to coordinating tree planting. I was overwhelmed.

Don't make that same error. Have a plan. The plan might not be super in the beginning, but have a clear plan, a clear strategy, a clear road map that is possible to amend over time.

Third, fundraising is not as easy as it seems. When I came from an NGO, I had one or two grants with that NGO and that's one of the things that made me think, oh, I'm great, I can raise money. But now I realise the money didn't come because of a very good proposal that I wrote. It came because of the reputation that NGO had.

There's a narrative currently about climate change and people think that because you're in restoration, you can talk about climate change and the funding will come rolling in. It doesn't. That's why we're on COP 30, and if we're not careful, there will be a COP 5,000. We'll still be gathering in places to talk and little action is done.

I always say, let's look at what happened to COVID. Within not two years, there was a vaccine and things were back to normal because there was action, not just talk.

On reflection, maybe it was not really a bad idea at the beginning when I just plunged in. For example, we've been thinking a lot about carbon credits since 2020, but we have not done anything yet. Sometimes it is best to just take action.

Scaling across Northwest Cameroon's five agroecological zones

How do I see the future?

In five years, I'm hoping I'll have a dream team. As we speak, I don't have a dream team yet. There are still a lot of things that depend on me, which I don't think is a sustainable system.

We're hoping we'll be sustainable by then. From 2026, we're looking at continuing to receive grants but also having a social business that works on the cooperative business model. We want to have an investment arm, a pure business. We're also looking at payments for ecosystem services, carbon credits, and water credits.

We're hoping to be able to cover all five agroecological zones of Cameroon.

In terms of the communities where we work, we're hoping we will have thriving communities, not surviving communities. We're talking about significant, undeniable, measurable changes in terms of personal and household incomes, community development, healthy ecosystems.

Beyond funding, we would be very grateful to have collaborations with researchers. Most of these things I'm telling you, it's maybe my word against whoever's. We don't have any hard facts. We don't have any data. I'm able to say the water management committee called us and said there has been a significant increase, but there's no proof whatsoever. Somebody chooses to believe or not to believe.

I think it's about time we get into research. Not just say it, prove it with data. This is what the situation was like before. This is what it was after our intervention. For me, it's more credible. It makes more sense. Science is not based on emotions.

We still need a lot of volunteers. We don't have a lot of skilled labor around here. It makes my job difficult. I have to be training a team and implementing at the same time. Sometimes it's very tiring.

Finally, this is a very personal statement. Beyond grit, beyond resilience, beyond anything at all that anyone wants to do, especially if it's for the long term, it should be anchored on something bigger than yourself. It could be something divine. It could be a bigger sense of purpose. Just something bigger than the founder.

In my opinion, that is what makes organizations or businesses outlive their founders.