Development Ratings

Drought, heavy rains and locusts have occasionally disrupted projects. Climate change or regional conflict could cause tree management to be undermined or neglected in the short-term. In the longer-term, however, the type of intervention that Tree Aid is prompting will build resilience and provide coping strategies for local people faced with such crises. Tree Aid’s Ghanaian projects were not affected by the floods in 2007, reports of which were exaggerated, according to some visitors.

Training is labour-intensive due to the low levels of literacy in the target countries. The lack of written instructions means that future generation skills acquisition is also less predictable. This will lessen as increasing proportions of charity-benefited dependants attend school through at least primary stage.

The legitimacy of female land ownership in particular is a problem, and is dependent on the quality of local leadership. Groups of women, however, have greater success and influence on male attitudes. Male leaders are increasingly aware that supporting women’s rights helps the whole community.

There may be a risk of capacity being limited by funding and management resources. Earlier projects suffered from being too remote for adequate management and control. The policy now is to maintain West African projects in a contiguous area reachable from the Burkina Faso office. Despite the apparent limitations of this, there may still be decades of regional demand for support from the charity.

There is a question on the appropriateness of maintaining operations in Ethiopia. Obviously not in the same region as the other current countries, Ethiopia also does not benefit from the same relative social and political stability. The Ethiopian operations are managed by the local NGO with regular visits from an Ethiopian trustee, and the policy on continuation is to be reviewed. Ethiopia has, however, a dire need of positive intervention (15m classed as at risk from food insecurity). Fuding has been reducing in recent years.