Can drone-based, remote sensing create a reforestation value chain in Sierra Leone?
An interview with Christina Toepell, a Frontier Tech Pioneer
The original spark for what eventually became Project Sapling came to Christina Toepell when she was on holiday in the north east of Sierra Leone.
“I was travelling around for my Easter holiday, going on hikes,” says the Private Sector Development Adviser, “and one day a group of young girls passed our way, carrying firewood on their heads. I was told they had been walking like that for eight miles and that they were going to sell the wood at market for less than one dollar. That made me realise that, if we really wanted to help stop deforestation then people would need to be able to make more money from a living tree than a dead one. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. That's where this project comes in: to show communities the real value of a living tree.”
That realisation didn’t lead to Project Sapling becoming a reality straight away. It needed a tech partner with a spare drone to enter the picture first. But before we get to that, it’s important to understand the underlying economic and environmental pressures that exist in Sierra Leone, and why the existing approaches to those pressures may not be enough right now.
One more meal, or a beautiful tree?
Like many places around the world, some in Sierra Leone perceive a clear trade off between economic development and climate change. Christina puts in even simpler terms: “‘Providing food security and putting food on the table for the country’s population is the main priority in a country like Sierra Leone, so issues that are perceived to be more intangible, like climate change, are more difficult to keep at the top of the agenda.”. But, as part of her work at the FCDO, Christina finds ways to include climate smart policies such as food security and renewable energies, into economic development strategies. As a result, she is very aware of how important it is to take economic realities into account when tackling systemic problems such as climate change.
“Sierra Leone is a really, really poor country,” she says. “When you look at the human development index or GDP-per-capita, it is right there at the bottom. So it’s understandable that people here are cutting down trees for firewood or to sell at the market. Because that puts food on the table. If you have a free resource that you’re going to be able to sell, then you will do; because it's better to have one more meal than to have a beautiful tree.”
Although Sierra Leone has many existing tree planting projects, they are limited in their scope and scalability. As Christina explains, .“In the countryside it can be difficult to verify how projects are progressing.. But, more importantly, we can’t regularly plant new trees and then hope that they're going to be there for the future. Because, even if they are being watered and taken care of, at some point there is still going to be someone that has the intention to cut them down and sell them for firewood.”
Added pressure comes from the fact that Sierra Leone’s cities are growing at a tremendous rate right now. As more and more informal settlements are being created in urban areas, more and more trees are being felled to allow those settlements to grow. As trees are cut down, the integrity of the soil is weakened and the ground loses the ability to absorb rain, increasing the risk of mudslides… Which only encourages more people to move to urban areas.
This vicious circle reached its peak in August of 2017, when a devastating landslide ripped through Freetown causing millions of dollars of damage to buildings and infrastructure, and resulting in the loss of more than a thousand lives. “That disaster happened, in part, because of deforestation,” Christina says, “because water was seeping through the deforested areas and causing mudslides. Landslides are fairly normal in the mountains of Sierra Leone, and they have been for millennia. But they're happening more often now because of manmade reasons. And one of those reasons is deforestation.”
Four steps to reforestation
Like so many of the projects that make up The Frontier Technologies Hub, Christina’s idea really began to take shape thanks to the support and inspiration that came from her network of connections.
“The original option came from our tech partners,” Christina explains. “They approached me because they had a drone already in the country that they weren’t using. At that time I was busy organising an event with Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. They’re a local NGO who also do advocacy work around the country to protect the national habitat of chimpanzees.
“I had a chat with the head of that organisation, who is extremely well connected and also really cares about the natural habitat. That's when the idea really took shape, because I realised that there was something viable here that went beyond just putting an unused drone to use. At that point I also remembered my trip to the mountains and those girls, and my realisation that it wasn’t enough to just plant trees. That we needed to monetize it.”
Project Sapling has four overlapping elements to it that, together, Christina hopes will create a solution that not only has sustainability baked into it but that will also be financially viable and scalable.
“The first stage is to engage the community and get them to plant saplings,” Christina says. “Our tech partner is building an app that will help people track the growth and to protect the trees as they grow. We’ve brought on Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary as our community partner, so we can start really engaging the community as custodians of those saplings.”
The second step is to use drones in order to further verify the progress of the saplings, repeatedly mapping reforested areas to track the growth and monitor the health of the trees. This ties into the third element of the project, which is to take the data and imagery captured by the drones and share it online; so, as Christina explains, “people from all over the world can see and verify that this is actually happening.”
It’s the fourth and final stage that is the most crucial, and which Christina is most passionate about making a reality. “The fourth step is the climate finance step,” she says.”I want to see whether this is actually enough to unlock climate finance, either from the carbon markets or carbon credit trading platforms. Another possibility is around donor financing, and whether we can use this project to get around the donor hesitancy that is in that field at the moment.
“Why it's so exciting is that we can connect the people at the very start of the value chain. We can take someone who is very far away from the global carbon markets, and we can give them a real view of how valuable the asset is that they have there. We can show them how valuable a tree is to others around the world. Then, ideally, we could make the tree more sustainable and more valuable for the communities, so they are getting more money through protecting these trees. That’s the most exciting piece to me.”
Even once all those four elements are in place, Christina's work is not done. Because, for her, Project Sapling can only really be successful if it is able to grow and take on a life of its own. “Ultimately, we’re aiming for replication and scalability,” she says. “If a large company or a carbon trading platform was interested in using this as part of their own verification methodology, or if there was a large donor coming in that would find this approach exciting… That to me, is what real success looks like”.
If you’d like to dig in further…
🎧 Listen to the Drones Frontier to hear more about how drones are being harnessed for international development and diplomacy (5 episode podcast)
📕 Read our in-depth report on Making climate finance work for early-stage innovations in low-income country settings (long read)
👀 Follow this pilot’s journey on their pilot profile page (regularly updated)