At the heart of this community-driven initiative are three UN Community Volunteers assigned to FAO: Fatoumata Ka, Abdoulahat Ngom and Amadou Fall.  

It’s half past midday in Kawama Village in Northwestern Zambia and Mildred Kikwanda is busy preparing 'Nshima' – the staple maize meal – with chicken stew and vegetables, using a non-traditional means of cooking – a wood-saving, earth-block stove popularly known as the energy-saving stove. Beaming with a smile, and with a blue colourful ‘chitenge’ (wrapper) tied around her waist, she takes some ‘mealie meal’ (maize flour) from a sachet and sprinkles it into a boiling water while briskly stirring it with a cooking stick to make it thicker.

The main causes of forest and land degradation in the country include deforestation, inappropriate agricultural practices, forest fires, over-grazing and demographic pressures. A survey conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) reported that the annual deforestation rate between 2003 and 2010 had been 1.73 per cent. If this alarming trend were to persist, 17.3 per cent of the forest in the country would disappear by 2021 and all forests in Timor-Leste by 2071.