Year: 2014-2015
Funder: New England Biolabs Foundation

The main goal of this project was to facilitate effective protection and sustainable management of the Montonnso Sacred Forest of the Saamang Stool Land to preserve its sacredness and thus enhance the conservation of biological resources to benefit current and future generations. Specifically, the project enhanced the economic capacity of the residents whose fundamental livelihoods depend primarily on the sacred forest resources to eliminate total dependence on the forest resources towards its conservation; trained more than 200 smallholder farmers in cocoa agroforestry practices; facilitated the planting of about 12,000 trees of short, medium and long-term ecological and socio-economic benefits through enrichment planting in the sacred forest, private forest plantations and cocoa-agroforestry systems; assisted to resolve the power distortions which facilitated effective protection of the sacred forest, and empowered traditional authorities and community institutions to enforce compliance to the rules and regulations governing sacred forest.