Planting to learn: When pupils become guardians of tomorrow’s forests

In Cameroon, where thousands of hectares of tropical forests are lost to deforestation each year, the My Farm Trees platform and its native tree seed system — led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, and funded in part by the UK government (DEFRA – Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs) through the Darwin Initiative and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) — aim to restore degraded landscapes, create digital seed traceability, and monitor each tree planted. Among six categories of project beneficiaries (seed collectors, nursery growers, farmers, custodians of sacred forests, local authorities, and schools), educational institutions hold a strategic role: they shape the ecological habits of the next generation and provide secure spaces where young trees can grow to maturity.

The initiative quickly expanded beyond its initial goal — “one school per zone” — to include 111 schools across the West, Centre, and South regions, with several dozen more in the Far North, where a short rainy season complicates student engagement. In total, 53 native species — from bubinga (Lovoa trichilioides) to sapelli (Entandrophragma cylindricum) and moabi (Baillonella toxisperma) — have been planted in schools. At each site, Dr. Marius Ekué’s team prioritized participatory selection: students in grades 3 to 5 were consulted in gender-separated groups to share their preferred useful or iconic tree species. Parents were also involved through take-home questionnaires listing species already present in home plots and those to reintroduce to preserve endangered genetic heritage. This bottom-up approach fosters local ownership: planting becomes a community act, not a top-down order.

Nkoemvone’s experience reveals several key challenges. First, economic pressure: highly prized species like bubinga and sapelli may attract illegal logging once mature. Yet their location on public, state-owned land — “A school means the State,” Mr. Mékoulou reminds — serves as a strong deterrent.

The second challenge is the scarcity and cost of native seeds, a top priority for Dr. Ekué. “Producing native trees is excessively expensive,” he notes, advocating for greater investment in local nurseries to preserve species diversity, currently constrained by limited seed availability. To address shortages, the project has trained 335 nursery growers nationwide and established a network of 2,500 seed collectors who report real-time fruiting, enabling timely seed collection.

On the inclusion front, the project aims for gender parity, currently reaching about 30% female beneficiaries. Women’s limited access to land remains a barrier. This has led the team to partner with municipalities willing to allocate land parcels to women’s groups, allowing them to plant and manage trees for their own benefit.

The school model’s replicability appears promising. The combination of secure space, educational engagement, and digital tracking forms an open-air laboratory that other schools can adopt. Ensuring long-term care remains the final hurdle: a seasonal well nearby and a small maintenance budget are deemed sufficient to sustain the plantations. For My Farm Trees, each schoolyard turned into a forest island is a vital link in a network of “green corridors” restoring Cameroon’s ecological mosaic. And for the 31 saplings in Nkoemvone, the journey is just beginning: in twenty years, their canopies will shelter the songs of a new generation of students — heirs to a biodiversity their elders chose to protect.