As we have just published the final reports for the ECDD project, the Project Coordinator, now Technical Director of the NGO Dahari, looks back over the six years…

It feels like another era—my arrival in Anjouan in October 2007 to launch the pilot phase of the ECDD project. I had previously spent three months in the Comoros in 2005, managing a student project focused on researching the causes and consequences of deforestation. Following that, I invested a great deal of effort into building a support network and the partnerships necessary to turn the concept of a long-term intervention into reality. My arrival, therefore, marked the beginning of something new and the culmination of a great deal of hard work.

I have fond memories of those early days when everything was new; I had the chance to spend much more time out in the field, and there was no pressure from a large budget, a big team, or an extensive, large-scale program to manage. We began our work in the first village, Kowé, in January 2008. Badrou and Siti were with me back then—and since that time, they’ve both had children who have already grown up so much! We would spend at least two nights a week in the village, sharing mattresses with those kind enough to host us. During the day, we would discuss the life and environmental challenges the villagers were facing, and prepare for our first project: establishing a vegetable garden for the community.

Gradually, the team grew as we expanded our operations to a second village, Nindri, and recruited agricultural experts to manage our livelihood-related interventions. Moustoifa was one of these early recruits—he remains with us today, serving as the team’s "wise elder"—as does Misbahou, who became our local coordinator and is currently in the United Kingdom for a fellowship funded by the Darwin Initiative. Our area of ​​operation and range of activities continued to expand; by 2010, the team had grown to 20 people, and our annual budget had increased from £40,000 to over £300,000.

Our fieldwork has also undergone a transformation since the early days. Although the community vegetable garden generated a significant amount of money, a large portion did not reach its intended destination. Our participatory analyses were too lengthy and failed to provide all the details necessary for designing appropriate interventions. It has been a long process of trial and error, and of learning from our partners in the Comoros and the wider region—most notably in Madagascar.

We are now rightly proud of our impact on livelihoods and agriculture in rural communities in the Comoros: more than 1,800 farmers have received the support needed to improve their incomes sustainably—amounting to approximately 10,000 direct beneficiaries when including their families—and innovations introduced by the ECDD project are now being replicated by our partners in the Comoros and integrated into agricultural policy. We also provided the authorities with forest maps and species distribution models—produced by our ecology team and unique to the Comoros—to be incorporated into national conservation programs and the establishment of protected areas. Our work on the collective management of natural resources was also innovative for the Comoros, involving the development of a collaborative working model based on voluntary labor. I was particularly pleased when we managed to learn from our initial mistakes in Kowé, helping the villagers replace their aging water distribution system and thereby transforming water availability for the entire village. Another significant moment for me was the impact produced by the film Hadisi ya Ismaël, produced at the end of 2012 and based on lessons learned throughout the project, it aimed to attract more farmers to our activities and convince them to adopt sustainable agricultural techniques. The film created quite a buzz in the villages where we were working and won second place at the inaugural international film festival in the Comoros.

We experienced both ups and downs before achieving these successes—working in the Comoros proved far more challenging than I could have ever imagined. The significant number of failed interventions highlights the difficulty of working in the Comoros and explains, in part, why it took us so long to earn the trust of the villages. A lack of social cohesion and established, respected power structures made our work—particularly efforts centered on collective management—highly delicate; furthermore, the isolation experienced in the Comoros created numerous additional challenges. I am deeply grateful for the commitment shown by our team members throughout the project; they never gave up, despite the many difficulties. Their dedication and expertise are immediately apparent to everyone they meet—a fact that never fails to make me proud.

The culmination of the ECDD project is, of course, the creation of the new NGO, Dahari, which is now nearing the end of its first year of existence. We have devoted a great deal of time and attention to the development of Dahari, and I believe this may be the one aspect of our work where I cannot see how the process could have been improved upon. We have an excellent group of members who have elected a committed and capable Board of Directors. Several members of the ECDD team—who benefited from all the training provided throughout the project—have become employees of the NGO, though we also took the opportunity to bring in some new faces. Furthermore, the NGO was launched with a strong, pre-existing integration within its initial area of ​​operation, as well as established financial and technical partnerships—both within the Comoros, across the region, and internationally.

The challenge for Dahari on the ground is to integrate habitat and biodiversity protection measures into its landscape management model—something we are attempting to achieve through the adoption of a payment-for-environmental-services system—while simultaneously developing a monitoring and evaluation framework and continuing to enhance agricultural support. From an institutional perspective, the key will be to gradually improve the NGO’s operations, making it increasingly independent of external support, while continuing to build its reputation both within the country and across the region. I am convinced that the necessary groundwork has already been laid for Dahari to drive large-scale change in the Comoros in the future, and I intend to support the organization during these early years to help solidify those foundations.

It now falls to me to thank everyone who contributed to the success of the ECDD and made the creation of Dahari possible. On behalf of the team, I would like to thank them all—from the beneficiaries who remained patient with us while we were still learning, to the local and international advisors and partners who stood by us through difficult times. I hope they are as proud as we are of the role they played in the ECDD, and just as excited as we are about the future successes of Dahari.