“The bush is our home, our whole life” 

What does the bush mean to you and your community and which role does it play in the fight against climate change? 

 The bush for me and our community is our home, our house, our supermarket – it’s our whole life. We live in it; we eat in it – the bush provides us with everything we want. It's our hospital, it's our school, it's all we want. It's there, it feeds us and our animals, our children. But it also allows us to be in symbiosis with this nature, with mother nature surrounding us. 

 We must regenerate and protect the bush if we are to preserve our traditional knowledge and skills that help us to adapt to and mitigate climate change.  I fight to protect this environment, to protect my way of life, my culture, my knowledge – for the sake of my community I don't want my children to grow up without traditional knowledge. I don’t want my children to change their way of life. I would like them to know the ways of life of the Mbororo communities and what defines their culture. For instance, what is it like to go behind the cows while it's raining and come back and have a cup of hot milk? I would like my children to know that. That's why I'm fighting not only for my children, but for my children's children, to perpetuate what is our way of life, which is our identity. I don't want to lose my identity and that's the case for all the Mbororo – this is the case for all Indigenous peoples in Central Africa. I am here as the sub-regional coordinator for Central Africa. We have the Baka People and other communities, such as the Pygmies, who live only in the forest. I also fight for their cultures to be able to survive – this can only happen if the forests and bushlands do not disappear, so that future generations can live on these lands. They must know what hunting and what gathering is. What is it like to build a house or a hut in the rain and take shelter and eat food that we just picked ourselves, freshly organic, naturally in our forest? This is what future generations need to learn if our culture is to survive.  

 

Which challenges do you face in terms of land rights? To what extent does the transition from community to private ownership have an impact on traditional transhumance cycles? What are the challenges of managing land, forests and natural resources? 

Indigenous peoples are so marginalized that they have little or no access to land, and for Indigenous women it's even worse. So, the biggest challenge is access to land, territories and water, as well as support from local and administrative authorities to minimize the impact of concessionaires on Indigenous territories in the forests and agro-industry in the savannahs.  As for the management of natural resources, forests and land, the challenge is to make everyone understand the positive impact that Indigenous peoples have on the environment and the protection of the latter in relation to biodiversity and traditional knowledge. 

If you could send a message directly to world leaders, what would it be?  

If we talk about the impacts of climate change, well, it's not the high-ranking leader who feels this change, it's us, the communities, who experience all the impacts. While they might be able to notice climatic changes, experiencing floods or warming temperatures in some areas – they don't know that we, on the other hand, are dying every day because of climate change. So we’d like to tell them that they should come at least for a day in the bush, where we live, to see how we live – and if they are really determined to reverse the current trend, they need to work with the Indigenous peoples who are the holders of traditional knowledge and who are able to preserve this environment and protect our planet in a natural and spiritual way. 

What is your take on carbon markets?  

We need to be careful and work on solutions needed on the ground – and these will vary depending on the locality, which is why we must be very specific. There are countries that are going to position themselves, there are organizations that are going to position themselves, but we must always see that the grassroots organizations, the community organizations, the Indigenous peoples, are involved and contribute to these systems. And you must work directly with these communities to have real impacts on the ground. That's a challenge. 

I come from Chad and feel my country is quite neglected in that sense. The savanna countries in general are not too involved. Instead, countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic receive a lot of investments. But is it enough? No, I don't think so. Also, in terms of investments, I think we should not limit ourselves to the already identified countries. When a flood is coming, we are not only going to take care of one room – we must secure the front door first so that the water doesn't get into the house. When it gets into the house, nothing will be spared. If the kitchen is flooded, the living rooms flooded, everything is flooded! By this, I mean that we must start first with the advancing desert, which are the neighboring countries such as Chad, including the Congo Basin which has a part of the desert and a part of the savanna that must be protected. We cannot afford our savanna to turn into a desert – it’s the same with the forest area which must be protected so that it doesn’t become a savanna.

What do you hope for? 

We believe in our struggle and will continue – therein lies our greatest hope. We can convince people that we have a lot of needs, for which we have concrete examples and solutions. We don't have to make a big effort to have an actual impact on the ground: With as little as a hundred dollars, we can do something that a big organization can't do with five-thousand dollars. Our hope lies in our own strength, and we will continue to fight until we reach our goal.