200 kilometers north-east of Abidjan, villagers fight against illegal plantations. They asked for help during the COP15 on desertification, which ended on Friday May 20.
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“Silence!” Exclaims a resident of Bébou, almost 200 kilometers northeast of Abidjan. Machetes and slingers in hand, rifles on the shoulder, around twenty volunteers enter the classified forest of bossématié, a stone’s throw from the village. The villagers jump from their motorcycles and discover, behind the dense vegetation, small fields of corn and plantain bananas. Further on, hundreds of cocoa trees has been growing here for almost three years. Illegal plantations in this forest supposed to be protected by agents of the Ivorian state.
“We cut everything!” Says Pascal Assa Koffi, president of the Saupons the classified forest of bossématié, created in July 2021. At his side, a villager fits in the air to call volunteers left in another direction. Those who are also cocoa and rubber planters in their village cut with the chain and with determination all the plants they meet in their path. “We put all our hearts there, because we were asked not to come to cultivate on these lands. Meanwhile, the illegal immigrants are enriched here,” says Modeste Anet Bilé, secretary of the Executive Office of the Association of the Association , a machete in hand.
For the past ten years, thousands of illegal operators have infiltrated this forest, kill trees and grow cocoa that they sell to local cooperatives, as well as food crops to eat. According to the NGO Mighty Earth, 40 % of the Ivorian cocoa comes from the protected areas. To fight against this phenomenon, the residents of the ten villages located around the classified forest gathered in association and armed themselves. The illegal immigrants are mainly from Burkina Faso, according to François Ruf, researcher at the Center for International Cooperation in Agronomic Research for Development (CIRAD) in Côte d’Ivoire and cocoa specialist. Their clandestine plantations destroyed 60 % of the bossematié forest in ten years, according to the observations of CIRAD.
They burn the big trees
one by one
Their technique is repeated on dozens of plots. The illegal immigrants begin by “cleaning up”, that is to say that they clear the space, then plant the seeds. Then, as the cocoa trees need sun, they burn the big trees – frak, framés, Irokos, Bétés … – at the base of the trunks, which causes their gradual death and their fall. “It allows them not to be identified by drones, because the trees will not fall until a few months later,” said Galo Kla Abelle, president of the NGO Initiative for the development of cocoa, one of the first supporters of these villagers.
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