Joal-Fadiouth, Senegal – Clutching a handbag and clad head-to-toe in white protecting gear, Bintou Sonko removes a small metallic kettle from her purse and releases smoke into one of many 50 beehives nestled within the dense mangrove outdoors her city in Senegal. Pacifying the bees, the 53-year-old extracts a darkish golden liquid from inside.
In 2022, she, her sister, and several other others within the 67-strong ladies’s cooperative in Joal Fadiouth, a city 100km south of Dakar, spent a month studying learn how to make honey, construct hives, and work together calmly with the bees. Regardless of an preliminary concern of being stung, she is in little question of their significance within the mangrove.
For Sonko and her colleagues who’ve lengthy been shellfish gatherers, their newfound occupation as beekeepers gives extra earnings. However as local weather change and deforestation threaten the mangrove, many say beekeeping is nice for the invaluable biodiversity haven and carbon sink that shops as much as 5 occasions extra carbon than tropical rainforests.
“Bees and honey protect the mangrove,” says Sonko, president of the cooperative, Mboga Yaye, which suggests ‘a good Serrer’ within the native language of the Serrers, the primary ethnicity within the mangrove-rich delta of Sine Saloum. The delta was named a UNESCO World Heritage web site in 2011.
Sonko explains that the bees pollinate the mangrove forest, creating extra habitat for fish, shellfish, and shrimp that the ladies historically accumulate. However extra importantly, she says: “It allows the mangrove to rest.”
For millennia, amassing oysters and different molluscs has been the mode-de-vie for ladies within the mangroves. Mountains of empty shells make up burial websites within the city’s cemetery and adorn the cemented partitions of homes and pavements. However a altering local weather and rising inhabitants are forcing the ladies to innovate.
The UN’s Meals and Agriculture company stated in a January 2023 report that drought, elevated salinity of the mangroves, and overfishing imply that the volumes of oysters harvested in Senegal are falling, though actual figures are onerous to search out because of the casual nature of the work.
Richard Da Costa, marine professional at environmental communications nonprofit GRID-Arendal agrees. He says the impression of local weather change is contributing to a degrading mangrove ecosystem and affecting communities like Mboga Yaye.
“A degrading mangrove means you degrade the nursery habitat for fish, shrimp, and shellfish,” Da Costa informed Al Jazeera, highlighting that Senegal has misplaced 30 % of its mangrove space since 1950. “Oyster gatherers are having to spend double the time in the mangrove for half the return.”
That impression and Joal Fadiouth’s inhabitants doubling from 28,000 to 54,000 since 2000 may have led to a decimation of the shellfish shares, the mangrove, and their livelihoods like in lots of different elements of Senegal. As a substitute, Mboga Yaye, with the help of native environmental NGO Nebeday, is pioneering a administration method that conserves mangrove assets and boosts their earnings.
Mangrove improvements
In addition to gathering and promoting shellfish, the entrepreneurial cooperative has different entrepreneurial actions; they course of shellfish into ready-to-eat sauces, produce honey, jams, juices, cleaning soap, snacks, manufacture ecological stoves and biocarbon and have constructed a store and restaurant the place they promote these merchandise to their group and visiting vacationers.
In response to Sonko, promoting on to customers “enhances the value” of their merchandise in order that they will earn extra from much less and turn out to be extra resilient to a altering local weather. She explains that by promoting honey by means of the store and to resorts, they make 10,000 CFA per kilo ($16.50). This 12 months, they harvested 290 kilos of the salty-sweet honey, bringing in nearly $5,000 of extra earnings.
Because of the restaurant and the store, members promote the shellfish they collect within the mangrove on to the cooperative the place they’re offered contemporary or in sauces, fetching a a lot increased worth than in the event that they have been dried and offered on the common market. Bintou estimates that ladies could make as a lot as 20,000 CFA ($33) a day, in comparison with 5,000 CFA ($8.25) beforehand.
“Thinking of our future and protecting the mangrove has forced us to find new sources of income,” says Sonko.
Mariama Diallo, ecologist and researcher at College Cheikh Hamadou Kane in Dakar says the important thing to Mboga Yaye’s success is “balancing the needs of the individual with the collective.”
She calls this a “fine line” the place the ladies can meet their financial wants but additionally sustainably handle mangrove assets, by collectively imposing quotas and durations of relaxation when the shellfish are reproducing. As such, members can accumulate and promote shellfish to the cooperative a most of 15 days a month for their very own earnings, however every has to contribute to the collective’s actions like honey harvesting and managing the store, the income of which matches to the cooperative.
The motivation to adapt for lots of the ladies is obvious, as Sonko explains that 25 of the members together with herself, are widows and the only breadwinners for his or her households and youngsters. “I have no husband, no mother, no father – I don’t expect anything from anyone – we have to work,” says Sonko, a mom of eight.
Solidarity and social safety are constructed into the construction of the cooperative. Final 12 months it break up the revenue of 1.2 million CFA ($2,000) equally amongst them, however solely after paying faculty charges for the members’ youngsters and providing microloans to ladies who need to begin their very own enterprise too small to ask a financial institution.
“Mboga Yaye is a family,” says Sonko. “Every October, when school starts, we distribute money to all the women to help pay for the children’s school fees.”
Ecologist Diallo calls this mannequin “a powerful lever for the whole community” as ladies in Senegal are typically liable for schooling.
Nevertheless it’s not totally a clean experience: Mboga Yaye nonetheless faces the problem of inflation; increased prices of operating the enterprise in addition to elevated wants of its members as a result of cost-of-living rises.
Regardless of this, the cooperative is being held up for instance for different communities to comply with. Nebeday has supported Sonko and the cooperative to journey across the nation and lead workshops on their artistic method to mangrove administration.
This peer-to-peer studying mannequin is yielding outcomes as a result of communities belief and respect the expertise of Sonko and Mboga Yaye, slightly than a specialist coach who doesn’t know their actuality, explains Nebeday coordinator in Joal Fadiouth, Elizabeth Tambedou.
“With the women from Mboga Yaye, within two minutes they understand,” says Tambedou.
Native resolution, world impression
In a coverage temporary introduced at COP28 final 12 months, a gaggle of specialists on the French Nationwide Analysis Institute for Worldwide Improvement proposed working with and empowering indigenous communities like Mboga Yaye to sustainably handle and restore mangroves. They praised the mannequin as a more practical and sustainable resolution than large-scale carbon offsets, mired in human rights controversies and unreliable fashions that enable firms to proceed polluting.
Again on the cooperative, the solar units over the bustling processing web site. Oysters are specified by the driers as some ladies shuck and kind immediately’s catches whereas others clear the protecting beekeeping gear thick with clay from the mudflats.
Sonko, who works 12-hour days overseeing the ten completely different enterprises, reveals that her final ambition is to create an schooling and coaching centre for ladies throughout Senegal to study from their experiences.
“I want to help women be independent and protect our mangrove – if there is no mangrove, there is no honey, no oysters, no fish – no income,” she says.
