The United Nations Development Programme - UNDP Uganda Accelerator Lab concluded an exciting trip to Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire from February 12^th - 14^th February 2020. The two Accelerator labs were over the moon after this joint activity.  We had no idea how the collaboration of sensing the challenge of ‘Deforestation’ jointly as two countries would turn out despite the differences in language and socio-cultural environment, we got far more value from the experience than we would have thought possible.

It all started with the UNDP Côte d'Ivoire Accelerator Lab team through the Accelerator Lab Network Specialist - Regional Advisor for Africa - Mr. Amadou Sow reaching out to the Ugandan team for support. The Côte d'Ivoire lab, having started in December 2019, organized a workshop to introduce the Accelerator lab methodology to the Country Office colleagues. This was mainly to build their capacity in the Accelerator lab’s new approach to addressing complex development challenges and to galvanize champions for this new thinking as they embark on implementing activities of the lab.

The two labs are working on a similar challenge that Uganda has been working on for the last three months. This presented a perfect opportunity to share quick learnings, experiences but also to provide technical support to the new lab on how to navigate this new terrain. As it turned out, the team from Uganda benefited immensely too from the interactions with the country office, the external stakeholders from Government, Private sector, development agencies, Civil Society Organizations that participated in the workshop. The workshop was leveraged to spark a discussion, on the labs’ frontier challenge of deforestation and how the unique methodologies of the lab can be used to understand the complexities around deforestation.

Deforestation; What is peculiar and what is common in Uganda and in Côte d'Ivoire?

Deforestation remains a big concern in Uganda and in Côte d'Ivoire and globally we realize that over the past decades, the future of forests has become a matter of worldwide concern. We are at a wake of social, economic, political and environmental consequences of unchecked forest degradation and forest cover loss.

In Uganda, for example from our engagement with stakeholders in a series of collective intelligence meetings and the fact finding missions we realize that forests have faced severe pressures mainly from agricultural conversion as a result of population increase, urban demand for charcoal and wood fuel, over grazing, uncontrolled timber harvesting and policy failure among others. Uganda is at risk of losing all its forests if deforestation continues at the present rate, there will likely be no forests left in 40 years to come.  90% of Ugandans use firewood and charcoal as the main sources of fuel to cook according to National environment Authority (NEMA, 2018). The environmental negative effects of deforestation exacerbate climate change, soil degradation and reduced biodiversity. Worse still in Uganda, the declining forest cover has resulted in a fuel wood deficit hence rising costs and increased burdens on women and children who walk long distances to collect firewood. Therefore, if the situation is not reversed, the knock-on effect will be catastrophic, it will aggravate food insecurity, disease and conflict as well as pause or reverse the country's development trajectory. Uganda is highly dependent on Agriculture and vulnerable to climate change and variability therefore its economy and the wellbeing of citizens are tightly bound to the benefits that forests provide.

Côte d'Ivoire suffers from not only the effects of global warming through degradation of its coasts and the advancing sea on the continent but also from the forest cover loss that has been persistent over the years. From the engagement with workshop attendees we discovered some similar and peculiar drivers of deforestation. As of 1960, Côte d’Ivoire had approximately 16 million hectares of forest, 57% of the forests of Ivory Coast disappeared between 1990 and 2015 (Bureau National d'Etudes Techniques et de Développement, 2016). Only 3.4 million hectares of forest remain, and this big decline is largely due to the lucrative cocoa cultivation of which Côte d'Ivoire is the world's largest producer and other export crops such as coffee, oil palm, rubber and another phenomenon that has developed over the last two decades (aggravated by recent social and political and military crises: illegal gold mining). 75% of the deforestation comes from the conversion of forest into export crops. Today, the country is left with two million hectares, the forests have been over harvested and have become depleted of timber, making it a pertinent issue to urgently focus on by Government. The shrinking of areas covered by forests were also due to logging of timber for export, up to 70% of the 

timber is exported abroad, mainly to the European countries, in the form of flooring, plywood and logs from  forests and in turn this contributes to 40% of the country’s GDP according to the Director of forests and wildlife Col Major Zouzou Mailly Elvire Joëlle. “The Ministry embarked on a re-afforestation strategy and from the workshop, we have been exposed to the accelerator lab’s methodology in tackling complex challenges which is more practical and therefore Experimentation is certainly a good approach to validate the forest strategy.” She added.

Forests meet both domestic and export demands; the rush for agricultural land, illegal loggers as well as to clear the way for the cocoa, coffee, oil palm, rubber crops, unplanned urbanization, conflicting property land laws, lack of secure tenure for farmers, population growth and the lack of a viable reforestation policy have all compounded this issue. Concerning wood fuel in form of charcoal and firewood, Charcoal production was also mentioned to play a role in the decimation of Ivorian forests, but was not to a large extent like in Uganda’s case where 90% of households use wood fuel for cooking.

Great Learning Experience!

The journey of collaboration has only just started for us, what a profound cross knowledge sharing opportunity for the two countries! We had a great interaction beyond the language barrier. During our discussions with the Director of forests and wildlife, Col Zouzou Mailly Elvire Joëlle, we talked about taking the conversation forward and having the collaboration at Government level. We engaged in a discussion on what simple and inexpensive measures can be taken to reduce the pressure, how countries could be vigorous around their forest, prevent and reduce the adverse environmental effects associated with deforestation by using the Accelerator lab methodologies to identify system leverage points that can bring about transformation.

In Côte d'Ivoire some interventions were working well, for example there was a system in place to harness extension services and local reporting of illegal logging, this was very interesting for Uganda to learn from and replicate in our approach to restoring forests.

Côte d'Ivoire through partnerships with European Universities had also implemented some ICT systems for monitoring forest cover loss and using block chain for monitoring charcoal use. These were already fully operational. We were thus able to identify entry points and explore possibilities of learning and replicating appropriately what is working in Uganda.

The workshop provided a great opportunity of the Accelerator Lab in Côte d'Ivoire to develop a clear roadmap of activities, refine their tools, and set timelines as they embark on the journey of sensing in communities, exploring data, identification, and setting up the portfolio of experiments. 

We also had team building and peer to peer learning sessions where the teams interacted in-depth shared their experiences, challenges, fears while performing their job roles.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step and for us this first step is remarkable, we hope it will culminate into a deeper and solid partnership in our search for solutions geared towards reversing the rate of deforestation.

The Learning Network

The curator of a Global learning network the Accelerator Labs muted well the concept as the universal learning about the multifaceted development challenges exposes interesting insights and solutions for the citizens to explore. The UNDP Côte d'Ivoire Deputy Resident Representative / Programmes, Mr. Jonas Mfouatie said "Let us stop blaming the language barrier, collaboration brings a new perspective in understanding development challenges and how to address them".

Ms. Patricia ZOUNDI YAO one of the participants said that “Now I have an image of UNDP as a more accessible organization with innovative tools and methods.” Imagine different labs all around the world sharing experiences and learning from each other via various platforms, the amount of information collected, wouldn’t this solve most of the world’s problems? But, how many leaders in the world are on the same learning page? We will see at the “GROW” stage.