Non-Timber Forest Products

About one in every six people, particularly women, directly rely on forests for their lives and livelihoods, especially for food. This shows how important non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and forests are to ensure community resilience. Not only as a source of food, water and income, but also because of their cultural and spiritual meaning.

Because of the close relationship with their living environment, local communities often have the best ideas for the sustainable and equitable use and governance of land, water and forests. These environmentally just practices and processes successfully protect and restore ecosystems and address climate change. They are essential in the light of the multiple crises the world faces, but are in dire need of financial and policy support.

All around the world small-scale farmers are using sustainable and inclusive methods to produce food. Working together with nature and each other, they provide their families and communities with sufficient and healthy food. But their production methods are under pressure from large-scale agriculture and the globally dominant system of industrial food production. Together with our partners, Both ENDS is trying to turn the tide in favour of sustainable, local practices that are mostly known as 'agro-ecological' or 'nature-inclusive'. Why are we focusing on these methods? Agro-ecological practices are climate-proof and inclusive and increase the opportunities for communities around the world to produce their food sustainably.

In various countries in the Sahel, vast tracts of degraded land have been restored by the local population by nurturing what spontaneously springs from the soil. They do this using a method called 'Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR)'.

Our goal is a massive upscaling and mainstreaming of bottom-up, planet-friendly practices, supported by favourable governance systems and availability of financial resources. There are many examples of successful community-led livelihood models based on collective participation, healthy ecosystems, gender justice and a vision of wellbeing beyond individual wealth. Approaches such as Regreening focus on ecosystem restoration led by forest communities or local farmers in the Sahel. These initiatives recognise and respect the interdependence between human prosperity and healthy ecosystems. They help to empower women, youth and other groups that often lack access to decision-making processes and tend to be excluded from land, water and forest management to assert their agency and rights to self-determination.