Trees, Water & People’s 2022 Outlook
January is a time of gratitude and focus for us at Trees, Water & People. We’re bowled over daily by the generosity of our supporters, and January allows us to take stock of progress we made last year, challenges we’ll need to rise to in 2022, and the resources we’ve been entrusted to do our work.
Plus I think the days just started getting noticeably longer… which I’m certainly grateful for.
As with everyone, our plans have shifted due to the current wave of the COVID pandemic, scuttling travel plans to Honduras with several team members in January. Our plan was to go to see the amazing progress of our stove building program, which grew from 1,400 stoves installed in 2020, to over 2,200 in 2021 - an increase of over 50%!
Apart from our growing stove work, we are also anxious to see the progress of our Turmeric and Ginger plantings from late 2021. We planted 1,000lbs of seed as part of our Spice Agroforestry for Economic Development program last year, and these should be bearing seed in May for farmers we’re recruiting now.
In Guatemala we’re thrilled about the progress we’ve made via the USAID RISE Challenge, where one year in we have seen marked progress in recognizing, resisting, and reversing gender-based violence. Women in the program are organized and use gatherings and exchanges to lift eachother up to voice their roles and rights within the family, community, local governance, as well as in the protection, access, and management of their natural resources.
In El Salvador we’re starting a 3-year project with our partner AAP, to work with 15 communities in the Chingo Volcano Conservation Area and Apaneca- Ilamatepec Biosphere Reserve. The project will feature water harvest and storage, solid waste management, Justa improved cookstoves, composting latrines, and microfinance and entrepreneurship training. We’ll also be growing 40,000 trees in AAP’s nursery, to help reforest this critical protected area.
Our Indigenous Lands Program is starting 2022 with lots of momentum, and will continue to grow rapidly into Spring and Summer. We have just finished mapping restoration areas near Cochiti Pueblo, in Capulin Canyon of the Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico and are making plans for Spring and Fall reforestation and revegetation activities there, and also with Jemez Pueblo further south.
Post-fire remediation, invasive plant management, and watershed restoration will be the main features of our work on Indigenous Lands this year. Apart from our annual reforestation work on the Oglala Lakota Nation, we will also be working a lot more in our home state of Colorado, where we are actively supporting the Ute Mountain Ute tribe in rangeland management and riparian restoration, and in our own backyard, helping to reforest the Cameron Peak burn scar.
