The Understory | Issue 6 | Women of Our Alliance

Underst ry The

WOMEN OF OUR ALLIANCE

SPRING 2023

Welcome to The Understory

The Rainforest Alliance’s newsletter for the passionate supporters who share our mission to create a better future for people and nature.

un·der·sto·ry [noun]: A layer of vegetation beneath the main canopy of a forest

IN THIS EDITION:

A MESSAGE FROM OUR ALLIANCE

Nadège Nzoyem, Director, West and Central Africa

SNAPSHOT

Closing the Gender Gap to Protect Cameroon’s Forests

OUR ALLIANCE IN ACTION

Helping Indonesia’s Coffee Farmers Become Forest Guardians & No Hurdle is Too High For This Cocoa Entrepreneur

FEATURE STORY

Get to Know the Stars of our “Women of our Alliance” Film

MEET OUR ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Sarah-Jane Danchie & María Esther Saut Niño

JOIN OUR ALLIANCE

Connect with Our Coffee Klatch & Legacy Estate Planning

CONTACT US

OUR MISSION:

The Rainforest Alliance is an international non-profit organization creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities.

ABOUT THE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE:

4 million +

CERTIFICATION

We certify products that are grown in accordance with our standards, which support environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

70

countries around the world with active projects and/or certified farms

68

SUPPLY CHAIN SERVICES

We advise companies on how to drive sustainability within their supply chains, source responsibly, monitor progress, and innovate to accelerate transformation.

6.8 million +

hectares of global farmland certified against our sustainability standards

5,000 +

farmers in our certification program active projects directly benefiting farmers, forest communities, and nature companies working with us to source certified ingredients and improve their business practices

Our multifaceted approach to shaping a more sustainable world:

LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT

We work with farmers and forest communities to conserve and restore landscapes while improving livelihoods.

ADVOCACY

We work with companies and governments to advance policies that promote sustainability improvements, human rights (such as gender equality), and youth education.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR ALLIANCE

WOmEN ArE IDEAl SuSTAINAbIlIT y lEADErS

BY NADÈGE NZOYEM | DIRECTOR, WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA

To witness the impact of women’s leadership, look no further than the career of Nadège Nzoyem. With nearly two decades of experience in forestry and sustainable development, our West and Central Africa director has been an unstoppable force for positive change, catalyzing on-the-ground improvements by uplifting rural women and helping them transform their communities. We asked Nzoyem to explain the crucial role that women play in achieving sustainability goals.

For rural women, sustainability is not an abstract idea; it has a direct and tangible impact on their daily existence. Studies repeatedly show that unpredictable weather, natural disasters, and other climate-related changes disproportionately affect women and girls—threatening their education, employment, and even their physical safety.

In many rural communities, women are the ones tasked with finding water and firewood, and also growing and cooking food for the household. And it’s this special relationship with natural resources that makes them ideal sustainability leaders. While men will always talk about productivity, women will be thinking about the variety of crops to grow, water access, and so on—all the things that help them bring food to the table.

Despite being the backbone of the natural resource economy, however, women are often excluded from decision-making processes that directly affect their lives. That’s why so much of our work in Central Africa and elsewhere focuses on rural women.

“While men will always talk about productivity, women will be thinking about the variety of crops to grow, water access, and so on… all the things that help them bring food to the table.”

In my home country of Cameroon, for example, we promote women as sustainability champions and work to strengthen their role in managing their natural resources. As part of our larger efforts to support the land rights and livelihoods of rural communities, we have set up community-led landscape management boards (LMBs), making sure that at least 30 percent of their representatives are women. We also provide crucial training in business management to local, women-led agricultural and forestry enterprises.

To facilitate success, it’s important to remove the everyday hurdles women face. Sometimes that means having discussions with traditional authorities, along with their husbands and family members, to secure their support for the women’s efforts. Other times, it means working around the women’s busy schedules, creating workshop spaces that are child- and infant-friendly, coaching them in public speaking, and finding solutions to their specific challenges.

Over the past 20 years of working in Central Africa, I have seen firsthand the good that can result when women have the chance to lead. For instance, when the Rainforest Alliance established plant nurseries at a local cocoa cooperative In the South region of Cameroon, its women members spoke up. They told our local Rainforest Alliance representative that, in addition to the nurseries, they needed access to good-quality water to help them take care of the plants. This access provides the added benefit of lessening the time they spend gathering water for cooking and cleaning.

Although our initial plan had been to focus on building the nurseries, the input these women provided inspired us to expand the initiative. Once we understood their needs, we installed a water pump at each nursery, to help the plants grow and improve the community’s water access.

When women’s voices, are amplified, the results are felt far and wide. It’s a simple equation: strong women equal strong communities and strong landscapes.

FARMWORKER DRYING COCOA BEANS IN JUABOSO BIA REGION OF GHANA. PHOTO: MARCUS SCHAEFER

SNAPSHOT: OUR WORK IN CAMEROON

ClOSINg THE gENDEr gAp TO prOTECT CAmErOON’S FOrESTS

More than 80 percent of those living in Cameroon’s Western Highlands, and 70 percent of those in the country’s South region, depend on natural resources for their livelihoods, but rampant deforestation threatens their economic well-being as well as the future of these unique landscapes and wildlife, such as the mountain gorilla.

The Rainforest Alliance believes that the answer lies in building thriving rural economies rooted in more sustainable growing practices and forest stewardship, with women at the heart of these activities. In Cameroon, women play a critical role in crop and livestock farming, and the processing of forest products such as honey and spices, but they lack a seat at the table when planning decisions are made.

For these reasons, we have focused on closing the gender gap and promoting women as community

leaders—through equal access to education, financing, land rights, and training in sustainable land-management practices.

In the forests of Cameroon’s Western Highlands and the periphery of the Dja Faunal Reserve in the South region, we’ve established locally-led landscape management boards (LMB) that put power back into the hands of these communities— particularly rural women. Together, LMB participants develop strategies to protect biodiversity and boost economic resilience.

Within the first two years of our initiative, women already represent 32 percent of these boards across nine municipalities, and women-led enterprises are receiving business-management support. Advancing women’s rights can transform Cameroon’s rural economy—boosting agricultural yields, improving incomes, and promoting healthier landscapes.

WESTERN HIGHLANDS

Once a globally important biodiversity hotspot, these forests were home to thriving troops of rare gorillas and chimpanzees, and play an important role in the local culture, serving as sacred spaces for traditional rituals. While customary law helped to protect these sacred forests in the past, deforestation now threatens the integrity of these landscapes.

SOUTH REGION

Beyond promoting gender equity, we are helping farmers apply sustainable agricultural practices to boost yields, improve soil fertility, and protect watersheds. We are also supporting community development of landscape management plans, to reduce pressures on biodiversityrich areas like the neighboring Dja Faunal Reserve, home to forest elephants and an array of primate species.

MONT BANA

BAMBOUTO MASSIF

HElpINg INDONESIA’S COFFEE FArmErS bECOmE FOrEST guArDIANS

There are two goals that motivate Intan Fardinatri, our coffee manager in Indonesia: conserving biodiversity and protecting local livelihoods. Years of working with coffee farmers in the buffer zone of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park, on the island of Sumatra, have taught her that those goals are interconnected. “[Farmers] are the true guardians of this forest,” she says.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park provides essential habitat for the critically endangered Sumatran elephant, Sumatran rhino, and Sumatran tiger, but more than 22 percent of its forestland is

threatened, in part by agricultural activity. That’s why Fardinatri and her team provide training in more sustainable practices—like planting shade trees— that can also boost farmer incomes.

With the Rainforest Alliance’s support, these farmers have planted nearly 50,000 trees along the park’s border and learned to conduct biodiversity assessments of local wildlife. The assessments help attract tourists, who come to see rare species like the “stinking corpse lily”—the world’s largest known individual flower, named for the foul insectattracting odor it emits.

After inventorying flower locations, farmers were paid to lead tours and provide visitors with coffee and food—offering yet another example of how biodiversity conservation can generate economic value. Fardinatri remains hopeful that through innovation and collaboration, “we can protect Indonesia’s precious ecosystems and support the communities who depend on them.”

NO HurDlE IS TOO HIgH FOr THIS COCOA ENTrEprENEur

Tell Kpomin Minrienne Kole Edi she cannot do something, and she is likely to prove you wrong. A successful farmer and entrepreneur in Côte d’Ivoire, she’s spent her entire life breaking barriers. Although her country is the world’s largest exporter of cocoa, it has few women-owned cocoa farms, so the fact that she helms her own makes her an outlier.

Her determination was spurred early. The youngest in her family, Edi had to convince her father to give her a small chunk of “wasteland” from his cocoa farm, which was all that remained after her siblings had inherited the arable land. But before long, she had turned the abandoned plot into a lush growing space.

While other women cultivated subsistence crops, Edi focused on those she could sell, like cocoa, coffee, and teak. The income she generated was welcome, but she really did it to prove herself. Although she was training to become a secretary at the time, the pull of entrepreneurship ultimately proved too strong. “I wanted to work for myself,” she says.

And now she’s helping other women do the same, via an association she founded that offers farm training. The group has since evolved into a cocoa cooperative that Edi chairs.

But wait, there’s more. Edi’s achievements couldn’t possibly fit into this space, so her story will continue in our next issue. Stay tuned…

PHOTO: STEVEN DE WINTER / SOLIDARIDAD

gET TO KNOW THE STArS OF Our “WOmEN OF Our AllIANCE” SHOrT FIlm

In our last issue of The Understory, we introduced you to a short film that we had just debuted called “Women of our Alliance.” A celebration of women’s leadership, the film focuses on three (s)heroes who have worked hard to build their communities and protect their local forests in Guatemala’s iconic Maya Biosphere Reserve.

In the late 1990s, 12 communities within the 2.1-mllionhectare reserve were granted the right to make a living from these landscapes, as long as they could do sustainably. Their remarkable success speaks for itself: Despite facing a host of challenges, these community-run concessions have maintained a

near-zero deforestation rate while supporting the livelihoods of thousands of people.

If you were to visits these forests, you’d meet some extraordinary women, like Ángela Fajardo, board treasurer of the concession in Uaxactún. Over the past 20-plus years, Fajardo has seen women in her community go from being full-time homemakers, to harvesting and processing forest products like xate and ramón nuts, and playing central roles in their forestry enterprise. “We had to tear down barriers of machismo—firstly, by convincing our husbands to let us participate.”

At the concession in La Pasadita, Iliana Humberta Melgar’s work affects every single person in her community. As a health promoter, she is tasked with ensuring that her neighbors stay healthy—a critical role in such a remote, rural area, where access to medical care is limited. She has saved lives and shepherded new ones into the world. “I’ve treated people with snake bites,” she says. “I’ve also delivered a few babies.”

Melgar is similarly proud of her community’s commitment to restoring areas that were degraded by fire—work that has been done largely by women, who cultivate and plant saplings. “Due to the fire, animals had disappeared. Children hadn’t even had the chance to see them,” she says. Thanks to these women’s efforts, however, the situation has changed. “Little animals are coming back. You see more birds.”

It’s not just local wildlife that was threatened. Soon after Felisa Navas Pérez was elected president of the Cruce a la Colorada concession in 2011, she began receiving death threats. The diminutive grandmother took over at a turbulent moment in her

concession’s history. “Right before I started, someone in monitoring had been murdered.”

The community was also in danger of losing its concession contract due to incursions from ranchers who sought control of the land. It was Navas’ courage and political acumen that helped turn things around, a feat that earned her the Rainforest Alliance Community Honoree award in 2017.

The impact of these women’s contributions is likely to be felt by future generations. Thanks to Fajardo’s income as a concessionaire, her daughter has been able to attend college. For the young women of Uaxactún, the concession’s achievements open up a new world of opportunities, which Fajardo advises them to seize. “Don’t wait for someone to make space for you. You yourself must set your goals.”

Although Navas and her peers fought hard for everything they accomplished, she believes it has all been worth it. “If we had not [made the effort]—if there were no concession—there might not be a forest right now.”

“Don’t wait for someone to make space for you. You yourself must set your goals.”

ÁNGELA FAJARDO

MEET OUR ALLIANCE MEMBERS

SArAH-JANE DANCHIE

Whenever new supporters join our Board, they always bring a burst of energy and enthusiasm that lifts up our whole alliance. That’s why we are so grateful to have a new dedicated board member like Sarah-Jane Danchie. A social economist, Danchie has dedicated more than 15 years of her career to global sustainable development. She is currently the Director for Africa at The Social Investment Consultancy (TSIC) and specializes in investing in responsible global supply chains—with a strong focus on gender and racial diversity, equity, and inclusion.

She first met fellow Board members and Rainforest Alliance program staff at our February Board meeting in Mexico. Here, she enjoyed firsthand experience of our sustainable agriculture and community forestry work. “It was great to meet and interact with such a passionate Board and dedicated staff from the Rainforest Alliance country operations in Mexico” says Sarah. “I look forward to joining the team as they embark on a new, ambitious strategy which promotes innovative approaches to address climate change, promotes human rights, biodiversity and improving livelihoods.”

Bringing a new wealth of knowledge to our board, Danchie is helping the Rainforest Alliance develop new partnerships to improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities. Join us in welcoming our latest alliance member!

“It was great to meet and interact with such a passionate Board and dedicated staff from the Rainforest Alliance country operations in Mexico.”

SARAH-JANE DANCHIE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE BOARD MEMBER

mAríA ESTHEr SAuT NIñO

For María Esther Saut Niño, community is a verb. When a fungus began decimating her neighbors’ coffee crops in Chiapas, Mexico, Saut and her husband took action, converting part of their cattle ranch into a plant nursery to cultivate healthy coffee-plant seedlings for local farmers. As the outbreak deepened, they turned their entire ranch into a shaded coffee farm, eventually distributing 20 million healthy plants to the community. Since then, her Rainforest Alliance Certified farm has become a model for area farmers, who visit to learn about planting shade trees, enriching soils, and other sustainable and climate-smart methods.

Now that she’s become an expert herself, Saut delights in sharing her knowledge with her community and supporting other women in the

process. Because the local population is largely Indigenous, she hired a woman who speaks the local language, Tzeltal, to assist with these efforts. And when she realized that these families had little access to healthcare, she forged an agreement with local doctors to serve the community. She also involves local women in coffee processing and the cultivation of model plots of specialty beans so that they can target their coffee sales to higher-paying markets.

While Saut is not originally from Chiapas, it is where her heart is. “It is important to show your neighbors that you are out there working in the fields, and that you want to understand and help them, even if you didn’t grow up here.”

“It is important to show your neighbors that you are out there working in the fields, and that you want to understand and help them, even if you didn’t grow up here.”

MARÍA ESTHER SAUT NIÑO RAINFOREST ALLIANCE CERTIFIED COFFEE FARMER, MEXICO

CONNECT WITH Our COFFEE Kl ATCH

Our Coffee Klatch Series is a special opportunity to connect with Rainforest Alliance program staff. Each quarter, a different member of the Rainforest Alliance team shares their work in an intimate and interactive conversation, followed by Q&A. If you’re interested in joining our Coffee Klatch Series, please reach out to Arati Patel at apatel@ra.org

In a recent Coffee Klatch, Marla Naidoo, the Rainforest Alliance’s South Africa director, shared an overview of our certification work in Southern Africa. Naidoo also described the region’s diverse agricultural sector, sharing insights on farming and more. Click the image below to view the video!

To watch recordings of earlier Coffee Klatches, click HERE

lEAvE yOur lEg ACy

Have you included the Rainforest Alliance in your estate planning?

By making a planned gift to the Rainforest Alliance, you create a meaningful legacy for future generations. Donors who include the Rainforest Alliance in their estate plans or wills are among our most dedicated supporters and are welcomed into the Judith Sulzberger Legacy Society

Join today and receive lifetime benefits including updates on our work, invitations to special events, and recognition in our annual report.

To learn more, visit www.rainforest-alliance.org/giftplanning or contact Gabriela Sanchez, Planned Giving Lead at gabrielasanchez@ra.org.

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Take our *highly scientific* quiz HERE to discover which tree species best represents you.

Spoiler alert: They’re all fabulous!