What’s the main threat to Guyana’s forest? People trying to make a living.

By Chris Warren

Nick Thomas left architecture school to manage a gold mine in Guyana. The money was too good to pass up, he said.

Among the last things you can expect to see along the road headed south from the Guyanese city of Linden is a living, breathing human being. In large part, that is because the deeply rutted dirt road to Brazil cuts through thick forest where human settlements of any sort are exceedingly rare.

So spotting a young man in a teal t-shirt emblazoned with the question “what’s not to like?” wearing headphones and standing by the side of the road is reason enough to stop.  After removing his ear buds, the man, whose name is Nick Thomas, makes the startling comment that he had just been talking on the phone with his wife — in New York City, where she is a manager at the Starbucks in JFK Airport.

Besides serving as a human reminder of how technology has made the world small, Thomas provides a real-life lesson about one of the main threats to Guyana’s remarkable tropical forest. Thomas is a gold miner who hiked out from the forest to the road to catch a ride into the capital city of Georgetown. There, he planned to pick up food and fuel for the small crew of prospectors he was working with and return within a day. But the unexpected arrival of visitors changes his plans, and he eagerly offers to show off the mining operation he oversees as foreman.

A gold mine along the road between Linden and Lethem. Most dirt roads through the forest lead to a mine or logging concession.

Empty barrels of gas used to power an excavator are piled near the entrance of the mining camp, and the roar of the nearby machine as it moves dirt seems especially loud compared to the usual daytime quiet of the forest. It doesn’t take more than a second to see what the quest for gold does to the forest: A swath of land about half a mile in length and a quarter mile in width has been completely stripped of trees, replaced by large piles of soil, pools of water and the machinery and pipes needed to search for gold. This is what deforestation looks like.

There’s nothing illegal about what Thomas and his crew are doing; they obtained the required permits from the government and the presence of unknown strangers obviously doesn’t spook them. At the moment the global price of gold is low enough that this sort of mining operation is not widespread. But a few years ago, when gold prices spiked after the global economic downturn, legal and illegal mining were far more common in Guyana, making efforts to limit deforestation more challenging.

Thomas earned $10,000 USD from his gold mine during its most profitable week.

In a poor country like Guyana, the economic incentive to look for gold is strong and understandable.  Thomas left architecture school to become a miner because the money was just too good to pass up. He lured his cousin to leave school and get into the business too. “Today, he owns two of that,” he says, pointing at the excavator. “He say, I should have been here a long time ago, the money you make here.”

One of the ongoing challenges for Guyana is balancing conservation efforts with the economic benefits its people can gain from mining and logging. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) agreements that economically reward developing countries for protecting their forests can make striking that balance a little easier, especially when the impact of mining, logging and forest conservation on greenhouse gas emissions is estimated. According to research done by the Ecosystem Services Unit of Winrock International and the Guyana Forestry Commission, mining’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions is about three times that of logging.  Nevertheless, the emissions from these activities make up a tiny fraction (less than one tenth of one percent) of the total carbon still stored in Guyana’s forests.

For  his part, Thomas is convinced that his native land is doing a good job. “I travel Guyana 10 years, traveling from one mining area to the next,” he says. “All them places I travel, and most of the forest intact.”

How a Former Refugee is Working to Give Others a Voice

Stanikzai spent most his childhood in a refugee camp.

When Mojeeb Stanikzai looks at the displaced children of South Sudan, he sees himself.  He was just six years old when his father was killed in a bomb blast during the Soviet-Afghan war. Out of money and options, his family fled their native Afghanistan to a refugee camp in Pakistan, traveling through the desert for three days. Stanikzai still remembers the makeshift graves of those killed along the way.

Life in the refugee camp was hard, but with help from a relative he was able to get an education and graduate from medical school. Stanikzai gave up a career in medicine for another calling: international development. Now he works with Winrock, helping South Sudan’s children have access to a safe education and a better future.

Stanikzai spoke to Haydé Adams FitzPatrick about the lessons he learned from life as a refugee and how he’s paying it forward.

1. How have your experiences growing up in a refugee camp shaped your approach to your work in South Sudan?

Stanikzai and his family fled their native Afghanistan when he was seven years old. He returned to the country as a student.

I have seen how conflict takes everything from you: your family, your belongings and your dignity. You are forced to start from scratch and become a new person. Refugees, migrants and displaced people need three things: a support structure; access to resources; and a voice – someone who will advocate for them.

When we first arrived at the refugee camp, some of our relatives who were already living there rejected us. We had no clue what would happen to us and who to ask for help. Fortunately, years later, my mother’s brother was in a position to help us. He supported my dream to become a doctor. He advocated for us. He gave us a voice. So in my work I always look for ways we can support people in addressing those needs.

2. How do you help people rebuild their lives and restore their hope for the future?

I see a community as a microcosm of a nation. If positive change happens in a community, it becomes easier for that change to be replicated in other places. Education is something that gives you hope for the future; with it, you can rebuild your life, like I did. My parents were my first teachers. My mother taught me the basics, and I was able to teach others from a young age. Later, I started earning money from teaching. I was given a future through education. It fed me — literally. I say to people, do what you can to make sure you educate your family — your sons and your daughters.

3. How can a community suffering from recurrent conflict make sure that change is sustainable?

Stanikzai gave up a career in medicine to work in international development

When I look at conflicts around the world, most of them are driven by politics. We as a development community cannot fix everything. But we can raise awareness about the effects of conflict and respond to those effects by giving people access to the resources they need to rebuild their lives. Earlier in my career, we tried this in Afghanistan, to go to the root cause of the problem. We managed to bring opposing factions to the table. But, because we couldn’t solve the political root cause, the conflict went into a chronic phase and continues to be a problem. So it’s not easy to remove the root of the problem alone as a development organization. But we can help change mindsets and attitudes, so people choose peace over conflict.

Working to change mindsets: Stanikzai addressing community elders in Logar, Afghanistan.

4. Do you remember a moment in your work that made you optimistic about the future?

Whenever I go to South Sudan and visit schools, I see teachers and students using the learning materials that we have provided them. It reminds me of my own childhood, when those who had given us books came to see how we were doing. Now I am at the other end, working to support children in similar situations and helping to bring a positive change in their lives. That gives me great satisfaction. It makes me feel proud, and optimistic about the future.

In South Sudan, Stanikzai works with children who have been displaced by war. Photo: Tom Willcox

5. What inspired/motivated you to put your talents and expertise to work at Winrock?

 At Winrock, people are always looking for new, innovative ways to do development work. We look at the greater outcome of the work we do and how those outcomes or results would ultimately contribute to the future of the country in which we are working. The organization itself has come a long way, starting in agriculture and entrepreneurship and expanding into the areas of counter-trafficking, education, governance and the environment. I’m glad to be part of this family.

Mojeeb Stanikzai is a senior program officer with Winrock’s Civil Society and Education Group. He manages the USAID-funded Room to Learn project in South Sudan.

By Rodney Ferguson, President and CEO, Winrock International

Mercy Dahn was 9 years old when she began working on her father’s rubber farm in Liberia. At first she dug holes and planted young trees, but as she grew older the tasks grew more difficult and dangerous. She worked with acid that irritated her skin, and carried heavy buckets of latex that leaked wastewater into her eyes. She never thought of stopping because her family needed help. Going to school was out of the question.

But Mercy’s life began to change two years ago, when she learned to grow and sell vegetables as a way to provide income for her family and go to school. “It is the economic hardship that caused my daughter to do the kind of work she did,” said Mercy’s father, who attended workshops that raised his awareness of child labor’s hazards. “But thank God it’s over.”

Now 17, Mercy is a peer mentor in her village. Her life improved in part thanks to a U. S. Department of Labor-funded ARCH program run by Winrock International that brought rubber companies, unions, farmers and communities together to create shared solutions to reducing child labor. Strange bedfellows? Perhaps. But combining forces has strengthened relationships between management and workers, and made child labor issues harder to ignore.

One hundred and sixty-eight million of the world’s children work at unsuitable tasks and unsuitable hours. Fueled by poverty, low wages, lack of decent jobs and limited access to school or vocational training, child labor denies kids an education and access to skills that would lead to better paying jobs in the future. It robs them of childhood, it’s self-perpetuating, and — worst of all — many of us enable it.

Child labor is no longer someone else’s problem. The complexities of modern production make it more likely that something we use or consume every day — from seafood and chocolate to the minerals used in phones and laptops — may be made, mined or harvested by a child. Which is why this year’s World Day Against Child Labor highlights supply chains. The gnarly nature of these chains — and the many links in them — should concern us all.

But if it took a global village to create this situation, a global village can also end it. At Winrock, we take a collaborative approach to eradicating child labor, addressing its economic, social and educational causes by engaging with governments and the private sector. Our private sector involvement is not just lip service; we work with companies from the inside, setting up mechanisms to monitor the presence of children in the workplace, incorporating child labor issues into company policies and more. We also know first-hand the willingness of governments to address child labor head on — not just because it damages the reputations of countries and companies who allow it, but because it’s the right thing to do.

The government of Rwanda, where we have a project called REACH-T, has made child labor an issue in its national development plans. There is legislation prohibiting child labor and new policy guidelines to withdraw all children from the workforce and give them a chance to go to school. Equally encouraging is how these new policies are being embraced by an unlikely alliance of employer’s organizations, trade unions, private sector agencies, civil society organizations and, of course, families and children themselves. With rising school enrollment rates, Rwanda is proving that solutions, like challenges, do not exist in isolation.

But Rwanda is not alone. In every country where we have projects striving to end child labor — Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana, Brazil, Malawi and Zambia — governments and private sector companies are part of the solution.

In our newest project, we’re helping 40 cocoa-growing communities in Ghana design and implement their own plans for raising awareness about child labor. The project will propel more than 2,800 children back to school and give 1,600 women household members with the tools to improve their livelihoods and increase income levels.

Although the Ghana MOCA-Youth project is just beginning, we’ve been involved in child labor eradication efforts in the cocoa sector since 2002, working from within the industry through the World Cocoa Foundation. And we applaud such private sector efforts as the fair-trade company Divine Chocolate and the 85,000 farmer members of the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana who own it. The co-op has worked hard to eliminate child labor from its supply chains, and the commercial success it’s enjoyed is helping small villages build new schools.

Whether in the rubber farms of Liberia, the tea plantations of Rwanda or the cocoa-growing communities of Ghana, children fare best when adults work together to make change. It’s not just the best way; it may be the only way.

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By John Fisk, Director, Wallace Center

How many times have you heard that people are an organization’s most valuable resource? Turns out they make a big difference to the food value chain, too — in a surprising new way.

The Wallace Center at Winrock International has been working closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support 10 new value chain coordinator positions across the country as part of the Food LINC initiative. The coordinators will connect farmers to buyers and build understanding and relationships between local food processors and hospitals, schools, restaurants and others.

Like the connectors described by Malcolm Gladwell in “The Tipping Point,” these coordinators have a special ability to bring people together — integral to the success of food value chains.

One of the new coordinators, Sarah Fritschner of Louisville, Ky., does everything from persuading a national food manufacturer based in Louisville to use local food in his products to working with schools that are helping kids better understand what they eat.

Sarah Fritschner

In recent years, both the public and private sectors have invested in food hubs, food processing businesses and distribution networks to expand opportunities for small and mid-sized farm and food entrepreneurs. This support has helped chip away at the infrastructure gap for local and regional foods.

But the value chain coordinators add something new. They are part of a “soft” infrastructure — people on the ground who can build relationships with farmers, processors, distributors and buyers and put the pieces of the puzzle together in a way that hasn’t been done before.

The Wallace Center will develop a community of practice and create new knowledge about value chain coordination. It will document the work in each region and share best practices with organizations interested in starting similar programs in their communities.

It’s a bold new step that harkens back to a very old model — one where communities shaped their own economic destinies and people knew and appreciated the food on their table because they grew it themselves.