A favorable Forest Investment Program for Environment and Sustainable Development

Yacouba Lido is a herder in Galo, a village in the commune of Sapouy, located about 100 km from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. He owns a herd of several hundred cattle. In the past, when he needed to vaccinate his animals, he and his fellow pastoralists had no choice but to cut down trees to build wooden vaccination pens.

“Without a vaccination pen, it is impossible to vaccinate hundreds of animals in one day. In the past, we had to cut down at least 400 feet of large trees to make a single vaccination pen. However, the uncontrolled and unauthorized felling of trees is prohibited. So we were always in conflict with the water and forestry authorities,” explains Yacouba. 

In addition to the conflicts generated, the wooden vaccination pens did not ensure the safety of the herders, let alone that of the technicians in charge of vaccination. 

Amédée Tiendrebeogo, head of technical support for livestock in Sapouy, who travels every week to the various villages in the commune to vaccinate the animals, explains: 

"To do this work in wooden pens, everyone involved must be inside the pen. And it's really difficult to stabilize the animals for vaccination. I've often been injured. Some breeders and vaccinators have had more serious injuries than I have. Some have even died after being gored.”

Thanks to the project, 30 metal vaccination pens have been built to replace the wooden pens, each attached to a borehole to provide water for the animals. Maxime Ouedraogo, a herder in the commune of Sapouy, sees only advantages: “The new vaccination pen can hold at least 400 head of cattle. And everyone involved works from outside the pen, which helps prevent injuries. From an environmental standpoint, since the pens are made of metal, there is no longer any need to cut down trees to build vaccination pens. Better yet, we will plant trees all around the pen to create shade. Because there is water nearby, they will be easy to maintain.” 

With these metal vaccination pens, more than 12,000 feet of trees are saved each year and thus help increase carbon stocks.

In addition to livestock breeding, World Bank financing provided under the project has enabled the creation of 71 conservation areas in the forestry sector, which have been enriched through the planting of 700,000 seedlings.

Nearly 6,000 households have received improved stoves to reduce the use of wood for energy purposes. As far as agriculture is concerned, nearly 2,000 manure pits have been created, and 50 hectares of market gardening areas and 10 lowlands have been developed, for a total area of 78 hectares.

These investments have contributed directly or indirectly to the sequestration of nearly four million tCO₂ eq and to the creation of 5,000 jobs in the 32 communes where the project is active. 

Building on these achievements, the Ministry of the Environment of Burkina Faso, in partnership with the World Bank, has formulated the Communal Climate Action and Landscape Management project in order to scale up the approaches tested during the implementation of the FIP.