Introduction
Today, we have the honor of hosting two remarkable guests from Togo, whose dedication to community health, environmental conservation, and sustainable development serves as an inspiration to us all.
Our first guest is Koto Koku Agbee. Koto is a state nurse trained at the National School of Medical Auxiliaries of Lomé , specializing in community health. His passion for nature and community development has led him to play a pivotal role in the management of natural resources – particularly the community forest in his hometown of Ando-kpomey. As an endogenous facilitator, Koto represents the Ando-kpomey ecovillage to both national and international partners. His exceptional contributions have earned him prestigious accolades, including the Equator Prize from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) at the World Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil, and the Solution Search Award for climate change adaptation in Washington, USA. Koto is also a proud member of GEN Africa, thanks to his involvement in the Ecovillage Resilience Project 2.5+.
Joining him is Agbossoumonde Koffi, who holds a Master’s degree in Natural Science with a focus on the environment from University of Lomé . Since 2009, Koffi has been a dedicated civil servant at the Ministry of Environment and Forest Resources, where he coordinates the national Ecovillage Development Program in Togo. His work has been instrumental in transforming seven rural localities into ecovillages, with ten more in progress, promoting renewable energy, water management, agroecology, and income-generating activities for women and disadvantaged groups. Inspired by the commitment of the Ando-Kpomey ecovillage community, Koffi chose to become a member and actively supports their conservation efforts. He too became a member of GEN Africa through the “Ecovillage Resilience Project , following a pivotal meeting with the GEN team at COP26 in Glasgow.
Koto and Koffi’s extensive experience and deep-rooted commitment to community resilience make them invaluable voices in the discourse on sustainable development and environmental conservation. We are thrilled to have them with us today to share their insights and stories. In today’s episode, Koto and Koffi will begin in French and then our dear friend Abdul Otman will chime in with the English translation.
Interview
Eva: How did you become involved with the Ecovillage movement? How did you become involved with your projects?
Koto: I’m Koto. How did we arrive at the Ecovillages project? It’s thanks to Kofi. We have an Ecovillage in Togo. It was a community initiative with the support of partners, the government, and the ministry. It was thanks to the empowerment of the government and the local community. Thanks to the Equator Prize that we received in 2012, our Ecovillage has taken on an international dimension. We continue to work so that this international dimension can be sustained. At COP26 in Glasgow, we had the chance to work with Anna and we have continued the exchange. It was desirable that we participate in this project so Kofi registered the community. This is a bit of how we were able to belong to the Global Ecovillage network. Through the Resilience Project, we participated in training sessions, capacity building, community workshops, and reports that we have produced to date. We’ve been in this process for about a year and a half now.
Kofi: My name is Kofi Abusumonde. Abusumonde is the family name. Kofi is the nickname. I was born on a Friday. When a boy is born on a Friday, we call him Kofi. I work with the government to implement the Ecovillage Development Programme. Its a project that the government wanted to develop to sustain the local population of communities bordering the forest so that the people can protect the forest. We started with two villages and now we are at ten villages. So among these localities, I found the Ando-kpomey community and we identified it as a community that makes a lot of effort for the conservation of nature. So among the villages in which I worked, Ando-kpomey marked me a lot because of their faith in conservation, their tradition, and their respect for nature. Ando-kpomey really touched me from the beginning and now I’m with them. At COP26 in Glasgow, I met Anna, from GEN’s team, and we exchanged and shared a lot of things about what we are doing in terms of the development of ecovillages in Togo. And in 2022, there is a call for projects to participate in the Ecovillage Resilience project. This project was initiated by GEN, and we registered Ando-kpomey to participate in this project.
Eva: Thank you both very much. Kofi, you have already begun sharing a bit about what the communities you work with look like, and where they are in the world. Can you elaborate on this, taking us on a voice guided tour of your community?
Kofi: Our village, our community is located in the south of Togo, at the border to Ghana. It is an indigenous community of about 500 people. The community is located in the heart of a forest. There is a forest of more than 120 hectares that surrounds the community. The forest was made by the community. In 1972 there was only the savannah, which burned very quickly. And it had decimated the village. So, following this event, the community, our elders, decided to plant a forest around the village, so that it would become a large forest that protects the village. Back in 1972, we had a big, big fire, and that’s the moment where the community set up the forest and created the forest around the village. In 2012, in Rio de Janeiro, Koto went to Brazil to receive the Equator Prize. For this initiative of communal forest creation. Back then, we didn’t have any facilities. The social education system and health system was absent, and there was no water. Now, thanks to the help of the government, we have established a first school, we have water, we have a funded project about solar panels and we are working on the different aspects for resilience that are still missing.
Eva: I will direct my next question to you, Koto, to give you some speaking time. If you feel Kofi is a better person to answer this, please pass it to him. So, in this project, we talk a lot about resilience, and I’m very curious what resilience means to you.
Koto: Thank you again. For us, resilience is all the mechanisms that we develop to face social challenges, climate challenges, environmental challenges, and economic challenges. Resilience is a way to adapt to your environment while making the necessary efforts to meet your needs. It is the capacity to take care of our basic needs while adapting, considering social, economic, and environmental aspects. Regarding the community, as Kofi mentioned, resilience involves adapting and developing mechanisms to face climate challenges, regardless of past events. This project has been ongoing for at least 50 years, initiated by our parents and great-grandparents. Today, our ability to improve our resilience capacity is evident. For example, on the social level, we focus on improving social governance, inclusion, and the role and importance of women. Women in our community are both victims and key players in resilience efforts. They feed their children, educate them, fetch drinking water, gather wood, and provide heat. For 50 years, we have built our community with a strong focus on resilience, especially regarding women’s roles. Women act as both fathers and mothers, taking care of children and community relationships. Women are victims of environmental impacts, as we are a farming community. Our income depends on agriculture. To develop resilience, we must work in the fields, find food, feed our families, and generate small incomes. Our economic resilience depends on our crops and harvests. Supporting women is crucial because, in our country, men are typically the decision-makers, but women significantly contribute to the family’s and community’s social and economic development. We must also focus on fathers who make decisions at home or in the village, as their role can overshadow the mothers who manage relationships. If women are healthy and economically stable, the family thrives. Women handle child education and health, with fathers playing a secondary role. Therefore, resilience in our community emphasizes the importance of women. The core of resilience is the mother; if she is doing well, the community does well. Currently, as Kofi mentioned, women make up 60% of our population. Resilience, as I understand it, involves developing capacities toward women. There is significant economic pressure on farming, but we must focus on the relational aspects involving women. This is the critical point.
Eva: Thank you very much. I hope we can touch on this a bit more in depth later. But I appreciate this introduction to what resilience means to you. Before we go deep into the process and learning some of the impacts, I want to take a moment to better understand the traditional practices that you see have contributed to resilience and conservation?
Kofi:
First of all, I’m going to go back to what Koto said about resilience. For us, resilience is the ability of someone to recover from a shock or a painful event. It’s the ability of the person to rec over from a difficult situation – to face it. Now, putting the word resilience back in context, there is a natural solidarity and collaboration that operates when, for example, someone dies or is unwell. People come together, offering healing with plants, financial support, and other means. Individuals from various backgrounds and with different kinds of power are there to provide support. Now, as far as conservation is concerned, for us, the earth and the forest are sacred entities that we venerate. They are gods for us. Some trees are forbidden to be exploited in our country because they are considered divine. Our connection to nature is sacred, and certain animals represent gods, making it forbidden to kill them or cut down specific trees. These practices ensure that species of trees and animals, which are disappearing elsewhere, are preserved in our homeland. This contributes significantly to the conservation of nature. There are also parts of the forest that are off-limits except for specific rituals or ceremonies. These dense forests remain protected because no one is allowed to enter them to set fires or perform rituals indiscriminately. Such practices contribute to the conservation and density of the forest, similar to traditional protection methods in Brazil. For example, we have crocodiles that we can approach at five meters and they are not afraid of us. They are not aggressive. Because we honor them, we give thanks and graces to them. They are still there and they are not attacking us. Cultural practices are being lost as agriculture becomes mechanized and fertilizers are used. Traditionally, agriculture in our community is not mechanized; we don’t use engines. When clearing a field, we organize and help each other. The community can decide today to go into the field of a person and we help them do everything they need to do to prepare the soil. Even at the time of the harvest, we go and help. This is solidarity. We have an agroecological farm where we practice fish and poultry farming innovatively. This farm also serves as a learning center for people to farm without chemicals. More than 80% of what we eat is locally produced.
Eva: Thank you so much, Kofi. You have just shared so much wisdom and a lot of things that I think ecovillages around the world can learn from. I personally love hearing an example about preserving the forest as a sacred space that you need permission or a reason to enter into. This is one element I hope to implement in the project that I’m co creating in spain.
So, my next question is an outcome of one of the exercises you did within the Resilience Project, which was the historical timeline. Through this process, what patterns and fundamental changes have you observed in the communities you work with?
Koto: The fundamental changes that we have experienced can be structured into three categories. The first category is, as Kofi has just recalled, the vegetation fires that we experienced in 1972. I haven’t returned, Kofi has already described it well. These fires completely devastated the community, food infrastructure, and stores. The initiative was taken to create a forest around the village so that this would not happen again. After we recovered from these climatic or environmental disasters, in 1982 we experienced another phenomenon of pest locusts that appeared out of nowhere and ravaged our agricultural crops. They came to completely destroy the insects. They came to destroy the fields with our courses. And that, this year, created a situation of famine, of lack of food. We had practically nothing left to eat because the crops were devastated by the locusts. In addition to these two major events, there have been difficult times when we would have to travel around 20 kilometers to look for water to drink. The first category of events that we can describe as happy came in 2012. The community was identified among several countries, several projects, as a best initiative, and was awarded the Equitor prize by the UNDP. I had the honor of representing the community at this event in Rio at the Sustainable Development Conference. It was an important event for us in the life of the community. It was a great thing to be recognized in this way. These are the three major events that we can remember in the life of the community.
Eva: Another exercise you did in the Resilience Project was engaging with a community of practice. There were many workshops that took place over the past year. One example is the exercise that looked deeper at the root causes of some of the issues you’re facing today. Can you share a bit more about this activity?
Koto: I’m very thankful to GEN for bringing this practice because it helped us to deepen the context and the root causes of what led us there and what is happening in our community. This allowed us to analyze, to reflect together with the community, on what could still be similar or more serious events that we could predict, and what should be our ability to develop aspects of resilience in the face of similar situations. We did practical exercises to understand the challenges that we could face, especially the climate challenges, to better adapt. Because for us, survival depends on our environment. For us, the resilience is rooted in nature, the village is surrounded by the forest. Our very existence depends on the forest. So we cannot preserve our life if we do not preserve the forest. And the two are entirely related, its a very primordial thing. One of the exercises we did was a timeline, and this gave us a big overview about the resources that we had. If there are other aspects, Kofi can complete.
Kofi: So, as Koto said, this exercise with GEN allowed us to better know the deep causes of the difficulties that the community had. In fact, before, we generally found a spiritual origin for everything that happens, we said to ourselves, “Well, it’s because someone has gone beyond the traditional rules. That’s why the season this year wasn’t good. Or that’s why we had such a pandemic, Or that’s why there was a plague in the village.” It really helped us to identify the causes of these practices, because for us, we’re very linked to the spiritual reality. If something goes wrong, its connected to something spiritual, like a boundary that has been crossed, something that has not been respected. We see, for example, reality, but there are other underlying causes that are deeper, it’s like an iceberg. For example, the tree model that we did, we see the problems or the reality above, but at the bottom, there are things that have happened that you dont necessarily see. The majority of the community does not have a high level of education. Thanks to this project, we were able to show them the connections between various environmental issues. We explained that droughts today are partly due to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. We informed them that certain chemical products destroy soil fertility by harming microorganisms. Using these chemical products long-term makes the soil less productive. Additionally, people often use these chemicals without protection, which can cause health problems over time. Our animals also wander in the forest and might consume contaminated herbs, leading to diseases. We highlighted that many diseases we see today result from our own actions. It was a significant moment to explain that the root cause of many issues, like the spread of diseases, originates from past actions, such as using chemicals and fertilizers. When animals eat contaminated grass, they spread these contaminants elsewhere, which has multiple negative effects. We also discussed how the absence of grass can lead to fires. Young people traditionally protect the forest from fires, but if they leave, the forest will burn. Since the community depends on the forest for fruit, wood, and minerals, its destruction would force the community to leave as well. We used this opportunity to help them understand the broader impact of these actions. Thanks to the project’s framework, we were able to explain how destroying the land leads to unsustainable conditions, causing young people to leave. Traditional practices and spirituality, such as honoring the land, would also disappear. It’s a complex system that gets dismantled piece by piece. Through GEN and the practices we developed in the workshop, we were able to make these connections clear to the community.
Eva: Just to review quickly, one of the other exercises you did was in feedback loops and how your social action affects the ecology. And you’ve just touched upon this very nicely, so I just wanted to restate that.
And I’m very curious, in your opinion, what the most valuable tool for resilience you think ecovillages can share with the rest of the world? And why?
Koffi:
Among all the tools we did with our communities activities its the one with the atributes. That allowed us to asess the resilience capacity of the community. I think we can share it.
Eva: Can you explain why it was so important for the community?
Koffi: Yes, because during this exercise, we were asked to make classifications. These different classifications by category, such as our ability to produce and our dependence on the food plan, were really important for us. We could categorize and sort these elements clearly. For example, we looked at our production and identified parts where we are dependent and parts where we are independent. By analyzing these elements, we could determine that we are self-sufficient in terms of food. Additionally, there are three attributes that assess whether our territory is conservative of nature. For instance, what percentage of our territory is covered by natural resources? We know that more than two-thirds of our territory is covered, indicating that our territory is part of those that are conservative of nature. There are also aspects related to our practices, such as how we manage fields during inundation periods. During the dry season, we crop in the basements. These practices and proposals have allowed us to situate ourselves and assess our resilience capacity. We have identified areas where we need capacity reinforcement, especially in management. Our leaders lack sufficient management capacity, requiring training and capacity building. Using these attributes has allowed us to see ourselves in the mirror, revealing our strengths and weaknesses. It was a very great tool to see our strengths and weaknesses.
Eva: In addition to the tools you’ve taken from the Resilience Project, is there another lesson you would like to share with listeners ?.
Koffi: It’s not too early.
Koto: Yes, precisely. Another important tool is the tree model. While we know the difficulties and problems, being able to catalog them, situate them, and study the deep causes was not easy. These two tools, the attributes and the tree model, have been instrumental in addressing our challenges.
Eva: Beautiful, thank you so much. You have already shared a bit about some of the ecological shocks that you faced throughout the years -from fires to droughts to insect invasions. And we are sadly aware that many places in the world who are contributing the least to climate change are impacted the worst by it. I’m wondering if there are any other shocks you have experienced, either in your ecovillages in Togo or in West Africa more generally?
Koto: We haven’t seen an exchange of activities between communities or ecovillages. It’s true that during our sessions, thanks to GEN, we interact with our brothers from Ghana, Gambia, and Zimbabwe, who face situations similar to ours. Now, it would be a great opportunity, if GEN wishes, to organize an exchange activity between these ecovillages to learn from each other and discover new practices.
Eva: Thank you. Noted.
Koto: It’s true that in the rest of the West, there are Ghana, Gambia, and Senegal. For Togo, Senegal has mainly served as a model. As Kofi mentioned, the first missions proposed by the Senegalese government were to observe the ecovillages in Senegal. These initial visits were organized by the government so we could witness what was happening there. As members of the community, we haven’t had many exchanges with other ecovillages to share experiences, good practices, and challenges. Our focus is more local. We want to express our gratitude to those who wish to join us. This is a new opportunity for us to discuss this initiative, present it to the president, share our experiences, and connect with the local community. / We warmly invite you to come, visit, and see Togo for yourself.
In our exchanges with GEN, I tried to read a little and also see the experience of certain countries. There is a model of an eco-village that participates in our process that I found interesting. What we are trying to do in the movement today is to copy a little of what they did. It’s an eco-village in Ojibwe, something like that. I don’t remember the name of the country exactly, but it’s in the district of Winan. I’m trying to find the name. It’s Uta Ganishampao in the region of… Yes, we are copying the framework of this eco-village. I don’t have the name right now, but we are a bit copying it. It’s an eco-village in Banojibe. It’s the name of the country that I can’t find. But the model of the eco-village is something that interested me a lot. The design of the eco-village is what we also use to produce in our agro-ecological farm. There is the agricultural production part, breeding, pisciculture. Now, they have put a welcoming infrastructure that we have tried to build, some bungalows too for the welcomes. It’s the eco-village in Banojibe. They have structures like we are also creating bungalows for people that would come and be there to see what we do, and yeah. Now they also have at their level a training center for universities. We don’t yet have the means to build a training center, but if we manage to put this training center in place, it would help a lot of young people in our community and from the surrounding communities to come and settle, to learn to produce in an ecological way. So it’s a project that is important to us, and if we have the means, we will also establish a training center in the future. We have a big farm with enough space, but not enough means to do it like Balo-Djibi. We would like to do like Balo-Djibi and have a training center. For now, we don’t have the finances to do it, but we are working on it.
Eva: Thank you very much. I think you’ve already started to answer once again my next question, I’m curious, throughout the different ecovillages you are working with, do you feel you are becoming more or less prepared to deal with future changes, and how?
Koffi: Yes, because during the sessions, we listened to the testimonies, people shared their experiences. We have also learned from everything that people have said. The way people have set up forests, for example. The way they have helped set up solar energy, for example. And then the problem of flooding. The problem of flooding here and there. What we also learned in Canada last year, for example, the floods, all that. No, I wanted to talk more about the fires of vegetation, the fires of forests. All these events, we learned from that. And then we said, no, we have to develop the capacity to avoid or minimize these risks for our community. For us, it was a really important moment to see different communities and ecovillages in their storylines. How they created the whole community and which, I would say, threshold or problems they faced to get there. For example, hearing examples about how people dealt with the drought or with severe winds. Or what happened in Canada with no weather at all. It was really a lot of experience and refocused us on all resources.
Eva: From these learned experiences, would you say the communities you work with are becoming more resilient?
Koffi: There have been wars, there have been movements for the community to adjust….
….Yes, in fact, we have gained resilience because there are communities that have experienced very painful events in the past. For example, at the beginning of the session, we listened to certain stories of people who have been through wars, or there have been movements for the community to resist. There is a community at the level of the coast that has been very much experiencing atrocities. It’s in the distant past. So, if we listen to this story, what they have experienced, the ceasefire, we say to ourselves, there have been worse elsewhere than at home. So, when you know that there are people who are living worse, who have more difficult conditions than what you are living, it motivates you not to be fatalistic. For example, I don’t remember the name, but the community that was next to the coast, and they really had a painful time back in history, even worse than what we somehow faced with the fire. It really strengthened us to say, yes, it is possible. We can face anything.
Eva: Thank you very much, Kofi. Koto, I will invite you to answer the next question – Can you share some of the practices and tools that you practice as an individual or that your community practices for coping with change or for resilience? You’ve also already shared a bit about what traditional practices exist that add to resilience, but this is more on a personal level.
Koto: Yes, personally, in terms of resilience, I think that, as Kofi said, it’s not about being fatalistic. We have experienced difficult situations, and personally, We have experienced difficult situations but I told myself, we have to adapt, we have to fight, whatever the events we know, to say that, well, it’s not the end, we have to keep resisting. And, so if we have to share from our experiences, it’s about being optimistic for the future, and taking into account the current realities of what we are currently experiencing, to project ourselves into the future, and to say that, no, we cannot be condemned to live in a situation that we have today, as we will continue to live. That’s the example, the experience, the lesson I have drawn from the time we spent developing aspects of resilience. And personally, it helped me a lot to face individual challenges, personal challenges, which we continue to face. So, I am better prepared than before to face certain challenges. Its like there is really a power to go beyond to really achieve them. There is no reason to stay in what won’t work. There are very difficult situations and for me it really helps to empower myself to get thtough different difficult situations that I have to face.
In the image of the community, looking at what we have developed in the past 12 months, there is a better perception of what catastrophe we have experienced. And we understand much better the causes now. At least 90% of the community can say that what we have experienced is not necessarily due to an error or the appreciation of God. It is human behavior that is the origin of things. And if we do nothing at home, we risk simply disappearing one day. That’s what I’ve noticed as a lesson for the community, outside of my own personal resilience. So it is upon human behavior to change and to determine the results. We are stepping outside of this vision that things are coming from the outside. It’s more that we’re looking inside. What are our actions? How can they be the source of what really affects us? So it’s not only spiritual or external effects.
And so, if we have to share from our experience, it’s to be optimistic about the future and taking into account the current realities of what we are currently experiencing, to project ourselves into the future and say that, no, we cannot be condemned to live in the situation that we have today, as we will continue to live. This is the example, the experience, the lessons that I have drawn from the time that we have spent developing the aspects of resilience. And personally, it helped me a lot to face individual challenges, personal challenges, which we continue to face. So I better prefer than before to face certain challenges. It’s like there is really a power to go beyond and to really achieve that. There is no reason to just stay in what won’t work. There are very difficult situations. And for me, it really helps to empower myself to get toward different personal challenges that I have to face.
Eva: Now I would love to hear a bit about the future that you are envisioning. What do you see as a resilient community, region and planet?
Koto: There are different aspects to be improved…
… As far as we are concerned as a community, with the efforts we are developing, there are different aspects that we have raised. Time does not allow us to review all the challenges, the constraints, the action that we envision taking place, the social cohesion, a dynamic that can allow us to envision a better future. But from my point of view, I am optimistic and I am for our community too. The community is capable of being much more resilient with regard to the phenomena we are experiencing today. There is excessive heat that we’re experiencing today. We have never experienced it before. We do not know what catastrophes will happen, but we are optimistic to say that the better we organize ourselves, the more we will mobilize and find solutions to the challenges.
So, for example, the heat is one of the big things we got from the journey. And thanks to GEN, being a link at the global level, so that the difficulties we share in the network can be relayed. And the local solutions that we offer through our traditional knowledge, through our actions, can be relayed at the level of large international organizations at the global level. So we can together find solutions at the base, at the level of community, towards the whole planet. Because if at the level of community we do nothing, it will be difficult for everyone at their level to find a solution. So GEN constitutes for us an important tool, a relay, so we can go to the big decisions that are being made. Those who have the monopoly to lead the world can understand the local issues and work and accompany us to raise the challenges worldwide. For us, it’s really important that GEN is a sort of connector to the wider community, so that our local practices are transmitted. And also that we hear from other practices and other parts of the world. What are people doing? It’s important for the stakeholders, for the people that actually have the power to decide on a political level, for example, to really get to know what is happening somewhere and where resilience is coming from. Indeed, our community today is more resilient. The level, the capacity for resilience today is better.
Secondly, our community is difficult to access by road, because we don’t have access roads, especially in the rainy season. To have access to help our community, our villages, it’s very difficult. So it means sometimes if a woman wants to go to bed at night and we have to evacuate her quickly to a health center, the closest one is 25 kilometers away. So instead of barely 30 minutes, we’re spending hours before accessing the health center. So that’s also a problem. It reduces our resilience capacity. We produce, we are mostly farmers, but we don’t have the means to conserve the products. So the products once harvested are sold at a lower price because we cannot conserve them. To align this difficulty with this health center, we have 25 kilometers to the next health center. So if a woman is giving birth at that time in the evening and the road is flooded, then it could take hours to get there. And that’s one concern. The other thing is we’re farmers mainly selling directly our products because we don’t have anywhere to store them or techniques to process them. So we’re selling it at a small price because of that. If we had the capacity to conserve agricultural products for transformation, but we don’t have a factory. So now if next season the crop is bad, we don’t have a good harvest, there will be famine. So if we had been able to conserve, then at least we could use it for the next year and face the hardships.
So in conclusion, we have improved our resilience capacity in relation to what we have been able to achieve. In relation to the stories we have heard over the years, to what we have shared. So this has allowed us to be a little more resilient, to prepare us mentally to face future shocks. But in relation to what I have just said, for instance, in terms of social and collective structures, we are not ideally resilient.
Eva: Thank you. Before we close, I’m very curious , how have the insights that you’ve gained during the Communities of Practice influenced your work supporting the many communities that you work with? What do you leave this project with?
Koto:
During the different sessions and workshops that we organized, we used the tree model to trace back to the deep causes of our current reality. This process fostered a collective awareness within the community. Reflecting on past events allowed everyone to appreciate our current situation. As we conducted these activities, we also projected ourselves into the future, considering current realities. Kofi mentioned that we lack enough workforce and have started using chemical products to develop agriculture. This raises concerns about the state of our soil and environment in 10, 20, or 30 years, given the pollution and health impacts we’re already experiencing. We recognized a loss of consciousness and realized the need for alternative solutions. These concerns highlight the relevance of the elements Kofi mentioned. We acknowledged the loss of collective consciousness in our community and, through our practices and workshops, emphasized the importance of finding alternative solutions to ensure resilience against the challenges we face today.
Koffi:
In fact, when we conducted the different sessions with the youth and the workshops, particularly after the tree model, we noticed that everything is linked. For example, we explained to the population that today we are learning to produce in an ecological way to avoid chemical products. However, if the use of chemical products persists, these products will destroy the soil by killing microorganisms, leading to poor soil quality and reduced harvests. We do not have the means to produce large quantities. We are mainly using small tools like a hoe to work in the field. Poor harvests can lead to young people leaving for cities, resulting in fewer people at home to protect our forests, care for the elderly, and look after our animals.
If our animals are contaminated, we become contaminated as well, and we won’t have healthy blood. Using chemical products pollutes the soil, potentially forcing us to seek new land, which would lead to further forest exploitation and eventual disappearance. When people leave the village, those who protect the forest from vegetation fires are no longer there, risking the community’s survival since it relies on the forest for more than 90% of its needs.
When we explained that our actions today could destroy us tomorrow, there was some awareness, but it’s not yet 100%. Some still hesitate to go in the right direction. However, there are signs of a growing awareness of the need for change, and we believe it will get better and better.
Eva: Thank you so much for sharing, Koffi.
And is there anything else that you want to add to our rich conversation today?
Koto
On the whole, I’m quite satisfied with the interview. It effectively summarizes our current mindset, ambitions, objectives, and the challenges we face – spanning from climate to social and economic issues, all intertwined with environmental concerns. Collective mobilization is key, both within our community with our available resources and globally, where organizations like GEN play a vital role in advocating for support and assistance from various sources. Beyond our traditional structural and cultural frameworks, there’s an urgent need to adapt our way of life to effectively confront future challenges. This emphasizes the importance of GEN’s role in communicating our efforts and facilitating connections that can actually expand our resilience.
Koffi
As Kotu mentioned, GEN serves as a platform for us to showcase our community and increase its visibility. We aspire to create a documentary film highlighting our conservation and resilience practices, aiming to share them with others. With support, potentially through Jan’s website, we can amplify our community’s presence and reach a wider audience. Our dynamic community, nestled within a primary forest rich in biodiversity, seeks to share its experiences globally. While financial means would accelerate our progress, visibility is paramount. We aim to demonstrate our commitment to environmental betterment, utilizing our forest and resources sustainably. Ultimately, our goal is to inspire others and attract support for our cause. Whether through financial assistance or increased visibility, we remain dedicated to our mission.
We want to emphasize to the world that we are actively contributing to the global environment and well-being through our local efforts.
Eva
It has been really lovely talking with you both today and hearing about how your local solutions can have a global impact, learning some of the lessons you’ve discovered through the Resilience Project, and learning about your setbacks as well as your successes. Thank you again for joining us
Koto/Koffi
Thank you very much, Eva.
Thank you.
Outro
Eva
Join us again next week as we continue the conversation over what it means to be resilient in our time of deepening polycrisis. While you wait for the next episode of Community Resilience, we invite you to explore more about the Ecovillage Resilience 2.5 Degree Project by visiting us online at ecovillage.org/resilience.
GEN Staff
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