Project story

Thousands of women across Pemba and Unguja Islands are restoring degraded agricultural land by planting food and spice forests—growing back lush canopies across their islands and improving their income and food security in ways that support a diversity of life and climate resilience.

The work is done by organizing together as neighbours in their communities and on the land, so that one woman’s restored area is connected to the next in a restoration patchwork. Their restoration agroforestry then provides a source of food, spices, and firewood, which reduces pressure on nearby mangrove forests and directly helps restore those biodiversity hotspots.

These spice forests are hardly anything new to the region, but with a specific focus on women farmers, our team in Zanzibar is working to challenge long-standing social and cultural barriers against women, letting them lead the way. 

Want to hear from some of the amazing women that we work with?

Asha Ali Hamad, a mother of seven, has used agroforestry to uplift herself economically and support her family. Asha now receives seedlings and training in sustainable land management and climate-resilient farming. In her food forest, she was able to plant a wide variety of crops and trees, including banana, pineapples, jackfruit, cinnamon, neem trees, cloves, and more. She has “stopped seeing farming as just survival and started seeing it as a solution to climate change.” 

Ms. Mwanaali owns a nursery on Unguja Island. She has received tools and training on her journey. But for her, the biggest asset is not just the tools. “It is the skills I now have to grow, manage, and lead. These skills will stay with me and my community.” Ms. Mwanaali manages one of many women-owned nurseries, a positive trend that has allowed many communities in Pemba and Unguja to not have to rely on external sources for seedlings. These nurseries are hubs of knowledge, leadership, and resilience for many women across the island. 

Are you curious about what these forests look like? Step into the food and spice forests women are growing across Zanzibar:

Our story

In 2006, a community leader and climate activist from Zanzibar met a young Canadian tree planter travelling through the region. Driven by their shared passion for restoration, they set up 7 community tree nurseries, kickstarting a grassroots movement to bring back the islands’ lost forests.

That partnership grew into Community Forests. Today, we restore forests in Zanzibar and the Wabanaki region of Canada. Our work enables people to care for nature while earning an income, because climate action is only durable when it benefits local communities as well as the ecosystems they call home.  

How will Ma Earth funding help us?

Community Forests was founded by tree planters, and to this day our restoration work in Zanzibar is supported by the generous donations of thousands of tree planters across the world. Every summer, professional planting crews across Canada and Australia donate a day’s earnings to support community-led restoration in Zanzibar. These contributions go directly to materials, seeds, and basic equipment that allow local communities to restore the forests they rely on. This international solidarity, connecting people across continents in support of people and their forests, is at the heart of who we are as an organization and the communities we work with. 

Alongside the ongoing support from tree planters, the funds raised through the Ma Earth campaign will go towards community-led restoration in Zanzibar. 

With local food and spice production growing, we will use the funds to deepen the business support women receive and facilitate the next phase of our work — creating high-value market linkages and peer networks to help women launch businesses to capture more value from what they grow. Over time, this creates lasting income streams that make restoration a practical economic choice for households in the region. 

To learn more about the restoration your contribution would be supporting, watch this short documentary about our community-powered work on National Geographic.