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We’ve been busy over the last few weeks talking to farmers in the highest farmed areas of Anjouan, right up on the frontier with the remaining native forest. We want to understand how and why farmers make decisions to grow crops (or not) and to clear forest or cut trees (or not). Once we understand these decision-making processes more clearly, we can use this knowledge to start making targeted and justified proposals to local communities as to how the conservation agreements should work. Next step, in the New Year, will be to undertake focus groups with community members as well as “card sort” studies to determine what incentives farmers feel would be fair to receive in return for conserving forest.

Here, the Dahari team (from left to right: Nastazia Mohamadi, Salim Ibrahim, Abdoulkader Fardane, Samirou Soulaïmana) is with Maoulida Houmadi (right), a farmer who owns a parcel of land right on the edge of the remaining forest.