Since 2003, millions of fruit saplings and thousands of hectares of pistachio forests have provided 400,000 labor days of critical employment to rural Afghanistan under the Afghanistan Conservation Corps (ACC) project.
As winter passes in the Afghan province of Herat a certain sense of expectation is looming. All summer and fall 66 households in the districts of Engel and Karukh have each been busy establishing 200m² home nurseries in their home compounds with an average of 450 fruit saplings per family.
Almost 30,000 saplings in 13,200m² home nurseries are now slowly growing into fruit trees providing prospects for the many families of establishing sustainable livelihoods.
Another place in Herat, in the city of Urdo Bagh in the Gozara district, workers have grafted more than 35,000 fruit saplings over the summer in a Government of Afghanistan nursery initially supported by the Greening of Afghanistan Initiative (GAIN), which holds almost 70,000 fruit and non-fruit saplings by now.
This large nursery with its adjacent training centre, which also provides students from the agricultural faculties as well as local inhabitants training in sapling production, grafting, branch cutting, and pruning according to the season and time line, produces saplings vital for the establishment of home nurseries like the ones in Engel and Karukh.
In Afghanistan, 80 per cent of the population live in rural areas and are directly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods. After years of conflict, the environment and the agricultural infrastructure have suffered greatly leaving behind a rural Afghanistan faced to rebuild its livelihoods base.
In order to support communities living in these areas, the ACC programme was set up in 2003 by the Afghan Government, funded by the Government of the United States of America and managed by UNOPS. The aim of the programme is to work with the Government and local communities to conserve Afghanistan’s biodiversity whilst improving rural livelihoods and building capacity to restore and manage forests, rangeland and watersheds sustainably.
Labour-intensive methods provide work for vulnerable local residents, such as returning refugees, internally displaced persons, widows and ex-combatants.
Projects are identified and implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL), the National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) and other Afghan government ministries. Selected households such as the ones in Engel and Karukh are provided with the means to establish home nurseries such as tools, saplings, and training.
Technical support is provided by extension workers of the Provincial Agriculture Department, MAIL, who visit home nursery owners on a regular basis. Additionally, ACC Regional Conservation Officers provide technical advice and monitor project progress and implementation on a bi-weekly basis.
Further to the nursery efforts, pistachio forest management is another important component of ACCs work. Pistachio woodlands occur in a broad band across the northern part of Afghanistan, in at least nine provinces. Pistachios were once a major export product of the region, and Afghan nuts are renowned on the world market for their intense flavor and dark green color. Whilst in 1977, woodlands covered 55 and 37 per cent of the land in Badghis and Takhar provinces respectively; this pistachio forest has largely disappeared.
ACC and the Provincial MAIL departments work together with locally elected Community Development Councils (CDCs), Shuras (traditional elders) and inter-communal Pistachio Forest Management Committees in two of the last remaining stands of natural pistachio forests in the world, one located in Samangan and one located in Takhar Provinces, Northern Afghanistan.
Under this initiative, over 3,200 hectares of biodiverse forest is being managed. Protection guards have been designated, control posts constructed, forest boundaries marked, and demonstration rehabilitation plots established.
This pioneer initiative is generating employment for poverty-stricken, rural, semi-nomadic Uzbek, Hazara, Pashtun and Tajik communities whilst conserving a highly valuable natural resource base that provides the national and international communities with high-quality pistachio nuts. In addition, this initiative is being combined with the production of Devil’s Dung(Ferula asa-foetida) and Licorice (Glycyrrhiza glabra) thereby further increasing the value of the forest to local people.
On average, areas with pistachio reforestation have experienced a 20% increase in incomes.
By the end of 2009, this nation-wide programme has implemented over 350 sub-projects in 24 provinces with local communities and government counterparts. The sub-projects have generated about 400,000 labour days and these have benefited thousands of households living in rural, isolated and some of the poorest areas of Afghanistan.
They have addressed a broad range of environment-related needs including horticulture, forestry, soil and water conservation, river bank stabilization and erosion control, community-based management of natural pistachio forests, landscaping of public compounds (by women), management of natural protected areas, environmental education and awareness raising.
In Engel and Karukh districts in Herat province, villagers can now claim to be part of an Afghan success in which more than 3.5 million fruit saplings have been produced and ensured critical livelihoods activities for rural Afghanistan. Now, the fertile Afghan soil in Herat needs to do its part.