With your help, we are supporting a new project as part of our Rounding Up feature: your donations will go to WWF Germany and help fund the protection of biodiversity in East Africa, as well as enabling the people there to live in harmony with nature. Find out here why we chose this project and how your donations are making an impact...
With our Rounding Up feature, you can round up any payment you make with your Tomorrow card to the nearest euro. These remaining cents are then donated to projects that support more climate justice and help those affected by current crises. What works out as just a few cents for each individual actually makes up a large collective sum that has a huge impact and can really bring about change. Thanks to you, we have been able to finance eight projects already!
Protecting biodiversity, restoring woodland areas and ensuring a secure income in East Africa
Climate change is already having a dramatic impact in many regions of Africa. Frequent droughts mean that people and their cattle are competing with wild animals over scarce water resources, and fires are destroying the woodland. At the same time, heavy rainfall is becoming a more common occurrence, which, in turn, is having devastating consequences for ecosystems that are already weak and fertile ground that is being washed away. The people and wild animals there are having to adapt to these changing environmental conditions and find ways to strengthen the ecosystem. Another challenge is the rapid growth of the population there, which is leading to grasslands being overgrazed, forests being destroyed, and wilderness being turned into farmland. And this is exactly where WWF Germany’s Unganisha project comes in...
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Fotocredits: Pic 1 (Elephants): Daniel Crous, Pic 2 (Landscape): Daniel Crous, Pic 3 (Giraffes): Robert Styppa, Pic 4 (Landscape): Daniel Crous, Pic 5 (Leopard): Robert Styppa.
Our Rounding Up project with WWF Germany
The Unganisha initiative is an ambitious nature conservation program by WWF in East Africa. Covering an area of around 134,000 square kilometers, the Unganisha region is around double the size of Switzerland and extends between Lake Victoria in the west of East Africa and the Indian Ocean in the east.
The area is of vital importance for the protection of global biodiversity. One of the main aims of the program is therefore to connect existing nature reserves and ecosystems across borders via wildlife corridors to preserve the abundance of nature in this region for the future.
And the people who live here are also heavily dependent on the functionality of the ecosystems, their biological diversity, and the natural services they provide. The WWF wants to help the people living there to lead a good life, without them having to destroy the nature around them in times of need.
With your donations, you will therefore be supporting measures to restore woodland areas, stabilize biodiversity and communal conservation areas, develop the infrastructure and ensure a secure income for the local inhabitants.
Find out more about the specific annual targets that we want to achieve with our Tomorrow community here:
Plant at least 35,000 native seedlings on deforested areas in up to three important woodlands, as well as tending and replanting them, developing agroforestry systems, forest management etc.
Effectively protect at least 1,750 hectares of the most valuable ecosystems through lease payments, by improving the cultivation, restoring the area (beyond just planting trees) and by deploying rangers, especially in communal nature reserves.
Finance the protection and restoration of woodland, as well as avoiding at least 428 tonnes of emissions in the future with wooded ecosystems. This can be achieved by deploying rangers, introducing forest and fire management strategies, and developing sustainable forestry in existing woodland.
At least 1,010 families have earned a direct income from the project during the reporting period.
At least 8,400 people in local communities are profiting from the long-term effects of the project.
The biodiversity in the project areas is stable or improving. At least six indicator species in the project areas are increasing in number or present (once again).
There is zero poaching happening in the project areas.
About WWF
WWF Germany is part of the international environmental organization World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). For over 60 years, the WWF network has been working around the globe to stop environmental degradation and create a future in which people and nature can live in harmony. In more than 100 national and international projects, WWF Germany is currently working to preserve biological diversity and our natural resources.
Photocredits cover picture: Robert Styppa
