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Foundation PFN

Foundation
Plantations
Forestières du
Noun

The Plantations Forestières du Noun Foundation was established on January 3, 2023 by Ibrahim Louh, Tieme Wanders and Pepijn KoopsThe foundation's goal is: "To establish community forests (Forêts Communautaires according to Cameroonian law) in the Cameroonian Noun department in the interest of protecting nature and the climate (there and in a broader sense) and creating employment there."

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Forest

Reforestation project
Noun department (Cameroon)

Forest

Foundation PFN

Foundation
Plantations
Forestières du
Noun

The Plantations Forestières du Noun Foundation was established on January 3, 2023 by Ibrahim Louh, Tieme Wanders and Pepijn KoopsThe foundation's goal is: "To establish community forests (Forêts Communautaires according to Cameroonian law) in the Cameroonian Noun department in the interest of protecting nature and the climate (there and in a broader sense) and creating employment there."

ANBI (Non Profit Organization)

Non Profit
Organization

The Plantations Forestières du Noun Foundation aims to be an ANBI, a Public Benefit Organization (or "Algemeen Nut Beogende Instelling" in Dutch). The foundation is statutorily established in Dieren, municipality of Rheden (The Netherlands), but has its postal address at Zuiderzeelaan 79, 1121RA Landsmeer (The Netherlands). 

The Foundation is registered with the Chamber of Commerce under number 88795217 and has RSIN number 864781313. The Foundation's bank account is NL15TRIO0320630358.

Climate change

The climate is changing worldwide. That is nothing new, it has always been subject to change. At the moment it seems that the growing human activities also contribute to climate change, among other things through the massive emission of all kinds of gases into the atmosphere, but also through the influence of waterways and, for example, through the hardening (paving) of ground surfaces. As with everything, climate change also has positive and negative sides. In the Netherlands we find it pleasant that the sun shines more often, but it is a pity that we no longer skate the "Elfstedentocht" outdoor skating marathon, and it is harmful that rainfall is becoming more extreme, with more peaks and troughs. In the long term, a possible rise in sea level could also be threatening. It seems clear that the climate will never be completely stable or controllable, but we can try to use our knowledge in such a way that we do not let the changes get completely out of hand. Using fossil fuels sparingly is a top priority, but there is more.

Planting trees and creating forested areas affects the climate in several ways. Trees reflect sunlight, which keeps the soil below cooler. They sequester carbon dioxide in biomass using solar energy. They pump up water and evaporate it into the atmosphere, which creates rain clouds. They protect the soil from erosion and increase the extent to which water infiltrates in the soil, thus retaining fresh water in the soil for longer. So we should plant trees wherever possible! 

Terrain

Now, not everyone has a plot of land to plant trees on. But worldwide, such plots certainly exist! The Plantations Forestières du Noun Foundation is involved in the areas that the Sultan of Foumban has made available for reforestation in the Noun department of Cameroon. The Sultan of Foumban is the traditional king of the Cameroonian Bamoun people, who traditionally inhabit the Noun department, formerly an independent kingdom. In Cameroon, traditional leaders, chiefs and kings have the authority to make decisions regarding the use of all non-private land. In the Noun department, this is so strong that all non-private land is considered the private property of the Sultan. In the early 1990s, the Sultan decided to reforest part of “his” territory because his own people had requested this during a Nguon ceremony. A reforestation project was then started under the authority of GAPEN, an association of Bamoun notables led by the Sultan himself, and with technical and financial support from the Dutch timber company Wijma and consultancy agency FORM Ecology (now: FORM International). The European Union also supported the project for a few years under the name “Recofon” (Restauration et Conservation des Forêts du Noun), but after 2004 the project had to continue on its own, which unfortunately turned out to be too early. Many of the planted areas have since been lost due to lack of supervision, with uncontrolled savannah fires and stray cattle causing the greatest damage. The areas that the Sultan had allocated to the reforestation project are situated in very sparsely populated regions of the Noun department, where people live from subsistence agriculture and extensive livestock farming. The small villages are devoid of almost any form of infrastructure, the people live in self-built houses, grow maize and ladyfinger for their own consumption and often coffee or oil palm for the much-needed cash. Cattle breeding is in the hands of nomadic M’Bororo pastoralists, closely related to Peul/Fulani. These pastoralists herd cattle that are sometimes their own property, but sometimes also the property of others, such as wealthy Bamoun. The M’Bororo pastoralists pay a form of tax to be allowed to stay with their herd on the territory of a village. The Noun department has a tropical climate, there are some cooler hilly regions and hotter plains. The year is divided into a dry and a wet season, with the boundaries around mid-November (start of the dry season) and early March (start of the wet season). The population traditionally sets fire to the dry savannah grass in the dry season, to clear the terrain, scare away snakes and to more easily shoot game. The M’Bororo herders in particular benefit from these fires, because they suppress cattle parasites (ticks, liver flukes) and the dry grass even produces a few fresh blades of green in the dry season after the fire. The herds can just about survive the dry season on these. However, the fires are harmful to climate and soil, because the soil does not get a chance to build up a humus layer and all fixed carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere by the fire. The fires destroy everything that does not grow in the immediate vicinity of surface water. Natural vegetation therefore follows the contours of the creeks, with a pattern of grasslands in between. These grasslands are in principle all suitable for reforestation, provided that they are protected against the savannah fires. This requires the construction and maintenance of firebreaks and the broad consentment of the local population, Bamoun and M’Bororo.

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Gart van Leersum

Secretary

At the end of 2024, Gart van Leersum will succeed Tieme Wanders. Gart retired in 2024 and has devoted virtually his entire career to development cooperation. After his studies at Wageningen University, his work took him to Lesotho, Colombia, Honduras, Cameroon, Chile and Benin with the FAO, CARE, Wageningen University and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Over the past 13 years, he has worked from CARE Netherlands in fifteen countries on three continents on themes such as disaster prevention, humanitarian aid, community development, environmental rehabilitation and climate change adaptation with a focus on gender equality. 

Pepijn Koops

Chairman

My name is Pepijn Koops, born in Haarlem on December 29, 1970. I studied forestry in Wageningen but completed my studies at Hogeschool Larenstein in early 1996. During my studies I did two internships in Cameroon at the Tropenbos foundation and at timber company Wijma. After that I went to work in Cameroon to set up a new reforestation project in collaboration with the Sultan of Foumban. I had been planting trees since I was a child, so that was right up my alley!

Even after I had started working elsewhere, I still came close to the project with some regularity, because I had started a family with my Cameroonian wife. I saw how after a few years the trees were left to their fate due to financial mismanagement. I tried to have the firebreaks maintained a few times. It was not until 2020 that I “picked up the gauntlet” and decided to try to breathe new life into the project. I contacted the people from the village of Maloure whom I knew from before – they had created CODEMA in the meantime: an organisation for the development of their village. CODEMA responded enthusiastically to the idea of ​​giving the project a new start.

Since 2023, I have founded the Dutch Foundation Plantations Forestières du Noun together with Tieme and Ibrahim. I knew Tieme from my Wageningen studies and my internship at Tropenbos, and Ibrahim is the son of another Dutch/Cameroonian couple who we had regularly visited in Foumban. Through the foundation, I hope to be able to support CODEMA more professionally with the management of the reforestation project at the time, but the foundation also wants to offer other villages the opportunity to realize such a project. The foundation focuses on villages in the Cameroonian Noun department because of the good contacts we still have with the Sultan of that region.

Tieme Wanders

Co-founder (former Treasurer)

Tieme studied tropical forestry in Wageningen. He worked for 24 years in tropical forestry as a consultant, mainly on projects in Africa. Tieme has gained a lot of experience in the sustainable management of both planted and natural forests and has contributed to the certification of large areas of forest. He has been closely involved in plantation construction in Cameroon, Ghana and Tanzania.
From 1999 to the end of 2002 he was involved in the reforestation project RECOFON in Maloure in Cameroon. The RECOFON project is special because many tree species from the region were tested to see if they could be cultivated. Some of these proved to be very successful. 25 years later, the areas that were planted with those species can still be clearly seen on Google Earth. Although he has kept in touch with several of his former colleagues from Cameroon, it was not really possible to do anything to preserve the forest. With the PFN foundation it is possible to support forests like the one in Maloure with advice and assistance.

Ibrahim Louh

Treasurer

Ibrahim is an environmental consultant with an MSc degree in Environmental and Natural Sciences from Radboud University in Nijmegen.

Ibrahim was born in Créteil (France) on November 26, 1981 and raised in Cameroon where he grew up until he was twenty. Ibrahim's passion for forestry started at a young age, after which he did various internships at sawmills in Cameroon at the age of 15. Confronted with the intensive logging of Cameroonian forests - especially in the region where he grew up - he decided to study forest and nature management. He moved to the Netherlands and in 2001 he started the Forest and Nature Management course at the Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences in Velp. In 2005 he returned to Cameroon for his final thesis. He wrote a management plan for the reforestation project in Maloure, Cameroon. After his HBO education, Ibrahim decided to broaden his passion for nature and followed the study Environment and Natural Sciences at the Radboud University in Nijmegen.

After obtaining his MSc degree, Ibrahim started his career as an environmental consultant at various consultancy companies within the energy sector, as there was still a lot to be gained in terms of sustainability. In 2021, he switched to the renewable energy sector, with which he contributes to the energy transition in the North Sea. In addition to his current position, he has taken the step together with Pepijn Koops to set up the Plantations Forestières du Noun foundation. In this way, he follows his passion for forest and nature management and contributes to the fight against climate change.