First of 3 parts
René Etoua Meto’o runs a small cacao plantation just outside of Cameroon’s Dja Faunal Reserve, one of the world’s largest intact stretches of rainforest.
Here, elephants, chimpanzees and dozens of other animals share space with the cacao trees of the Baka Indigenous People, who have lived in the dense forests of the Congo Basin for generations.
But many in this area have long been forced to scrape together a living on the margins of the reserve. That began to change in 2021, though, under a project led by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Agricultural extension workers showed Meto’o and his neighbors how to boost their yields without clearing land, critical to preserving the rainforest—and wildlife—that surrounds their farms.
“My family is now getting a premium price for our cocoa, which allows us to survive and invest,” says Meto’o, a 26-year-old father of three.
The training was part of a larger conservation effort led by UNEP. Its goal: to protect the fast-disappearing rainforests and peatlands of eight Congo Basin countries by improving the lives of people who call the region home. Financed by the Global Environment Facility, the push is designed to preserve one of the world’s most biodiverse places, a thicket of trees and peatlands home to more than 11,000 species of animals and plants, according to the World Wildlife Fund.(To be continued)
UNEP News
