Summary of the impact

There is a long-running conflict of interest between fuelwood use and woodland conservation in Northern Nigeria which this project both highlights and helps to overcome. The project is a partnership between the UoB, Bath University and Bayero University Kano and is underpinned and largely inspired by earlier research undertaken by UoB staff member Reg Cline-Cole (see corroborating source 2 in section 5 below). The project promotes dialogue between official policy makers and local fuelwood users. This has given ordinary people a voice in public discussion and had a direct impact on regional development and energy policy. The project has also had an impact on teaching and capacity building at our partner institution Bayero University Kano, and has promoted gender equality through the inclusion of women students and researchers. The partners' egalitarian co-ownership of the project provides a model of North-South collaboration.

Underpinning research

Reg Cline-Cole (RC-C)'s research in the 1990s provided the intellectual basis for the current fuelwood/conservation project. The 1990s research took up the findings of an earlier United Nations University (UNU) research project (1980-7), to which RC-C was also a key contributor, which had for the first time challenged the prevailing assumption that dense population clusters in semi-arid zones always impact negatively on surrounding areas through fuel consumption. The UNU research group had shown that in the area around Kano, Nigeria, local people spontaneously developed strategies for conservation — planting trees, exchanging seedlings — and maintained these over long periods. However, it was thought that the Kano case might have been an exception. RC-C's research after 1993, drawing on his findings for a major consultancy commissioned by the Federal Government of Nigeria, showed decisively that this was not the case. Across Northern Nigeria, local populations tried to balance fuelwood production and use with vegetation conservation (see output R1 below). RC-C's continuing research therefore emphasised the need for long-term monitoring of trends in vegetation structure and composition, and for the incorporation of local perspectives on vegetation protection and use. This led to official adoption of decentralised farm forestry. However, local forestry officials still retained a top-down and protectionist approach while paying lip service to decentralisation. In a key article (R2) RC-C argued for genuine local participation. He demonstrated the value of a long historical perspective in an article which revealed the existence of popular woodland and tree management practices even in the straitened circumstances of the Second World War (R3). In subsequent work RC-C explored the linked themes of knowledge creation and normalisation in firewood studies and changing discourses surrounding woodfuel production, use and change into the 21st century (R4-R5).

This research has been influential worldwide. It has been taken up as a key point of comparison in work on Peru (Maxwell, Human Ecology 39 (4) 2011:465-78), Botswana (van der Horst & Hovorka, Biomass and Bioenergy 33 (11) 2009:1605-16), Mali (Benjaminsen, Geoforum 24 (4) 1993:397-409; Hautdidier, Bûcherons et dynamiques institutionelles locales au Mali, PhD thesis ISIVE Paris 2007), and across West Africa (Woodwell, Fuelwood and Land Use in West Africa: report for International Resources Group, Washington DC 2002) and discussed in a Global Assessment Report by the International Union of Forest Research Organisations (2010).

The project which underpins the impact case study builds upon and is made possible by this preceding body of research. Funded by Development Partnerships in Higher Education (DelPHE) and begun in 2010, it responds to the call for long-term monitoring by revisiting Kano sites to establish the extent of more recent changes. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods (interviews, vegetation surveys, focus group discussions, participatory research assessment, participant observation), it has discovered a more complex picture than earlier predicted (R6). Some outlying areas around Kano that formerly did not protect vegetation are now beginning to do so, while some of the near farmland areas are losing vegetation at a sometimes rapid rate. It has shown that official energy policy in Northern Nigeria will have to address firewood issues directly rather than treating firewood as a residual source of energy due to be superseded by modern energy sources. Wood energy use is not declining: it is diversifying. A recent development has been the increasing use of charcoal, a more convenient fuel for urban domestic use which, like firewood, comes from woody vegetation. However, neither this fuel shift nor its policy implications registered immediately on government radar. This shows the importance of the project's investment in (a) long-term monitoring and (b) bringing forestry officials/ government policy makers into dialogue with researchers and local fuel users to ensure the strategies and perceptions of the latter are taken fully into account.

Reg Cline-Cole (Senior Lecturer) has been based at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham since 1992.

References to the research

Evidence of the quality of the underpinning research: (a) publication R5 was selected as a key article in Taylor and Francis's celebration of 2012 as the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/offers/iyse2012/index.html); (b) the funder of the present project, DelPHE, has portrayed it as one of its flagship projects and has used the project video as an example of good practice (source 1 below). An internal DelPHE report, prepared as part of its overall programme review, corroborates this (source 2); (c) a DelPHE representative has noted that the Kano project `was one of the few projects out of the 200 funded under DelPHE that built on historic research..... which provided the baseline data for your DelPHE project in round 5. This has made it possible to demonstrate impact, or lack thereof, which is a relatively rare thing in short-term projects'.

Details of the impact

A joint and equal partnership between UoB, University of Bath and Bayero University Kano, the DelPHE project began in 2010 and ends in 2013. It was designed to engage with policy makers and representatives of NGOs, and bring them into dialogue with local community members. Additional benefits were the facilitation of capacity building, a reduction in gender inequality in the context of the project, and stimulation of curriculum development and programme review in Bayero University Kano (see source 2 below).

Influencing policy by bridging the divide

The project has made forestry officials and environmental NGOs aware of the need for a long-term perspective on fuelwood and attention to the priorities of local fuelwood users and sellers.

• An initial workshop (November 2010) brought together academics, policy makers, representatives from government and non-governmental organisations, and the media from across Northern Nigeria. It provided a `neutral' space for competing local and extra-local interests to communicate directly, and during a display of improved fuel-efficient stoves organised by the NGO Developmental Association for Renewable Energies (DARE).
• A second workshop to discuss the future of energy use in dryland Nigeria (November 2012) brought firewood sellers into the discussion. Project findings were discussed with them in Hausa as well as English (source 3).
• This workshop devoted `open' sessions to the activities of CBOs, NGOs and interested members of the public (with special emphasis on female participants, given a local context in which traditional gender roles limit female participation in such fora), to complement the participation of representatives from relevant government agencies and academic institutions.
• NGOs have been influenced by the research: a representative from DARE (see above) affirmed that the design of, and justification for, their own project had benefited greatly from insights derived from Cline-Cole's previous research; and that DelPHE project activities have impacted directly on DARE's current activities: `For example, many people have become sensitized, through the debates organized by the DelPHE project, to the hazards of uncontrolled felling of trees for fuel wood and have been contacting us to procure the efficient Fuel Wood Stoves we are promoting.'. (Source 4).

The impact of the project is attested by the Director of Forestry, Kano, in a long interview with UK partners RC-C and R.Maconachie (RM), in which he stated that his participation in the project convinced him of the need to put firewood issues on government policy agenda (source 5):

`...in the light of the findings of this research, the Kano State Forestry Directorate will be taking the lead in ensuring, via the good offices of the Kano State Governor, that the issue makes it on to the agenda of the Governors Forum by emphasising the regional — and even wider national — scale of fuelwood-related issues and the need for collaborative and coordinated solutions to be considered for addressing the "firewood problem"... The DelPHE project does help to bridge the gap between Kano State forestry professionals and officials, academic researchers, woodfuel sellers and ordinary consumers. `

Enhancing public understanding

• The project website (source 6) is designed to publicise the debates arising from the project research. It currently carries a video (also on DASA website) introducing the project, alongside material on project activities, and will go on to present further project findings in future.
• The Kano partners were interviewed by local and international media (Radio Deutsche Welle, BBC Hausa Service) about the project and its activities following its formal launch in 2010. The Kano partner participated in a radio talk show in Hausa in 2012 on environmental awareness aimed at young people, demonstrating the project's value in highlighting the role of tree planting in environmental management (source 7). This is to be followed up by another radio talk show in Hausa, organised by the Kano partners, in which popular questions and concerns relating to the project topic will be discussed.

Influencing teaching programmes and equality

• The project has impacted on capacity building, skills training and widening participation in the partner HEI. Building on previous collaboration which led to the creation of a new MSc in land development at Bayero University in the 1980s, it has set up capacity building and skills training programmes for young researchers based on collaborative participation in practical project activities, starting in 2010. It thus ensures further, sustained impact on local livelihoods and resource management in future, particularly as a gender-balanced, field-work trained, community conscious cohort of young researchers progresses through the ranks. This capacity building element has been integrated into existing undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the Department of Geography from 2011, helping reorientate teaching towards a community-focused and experience-rich approach. This is reflected in a new natural resource focus in a completely revamped MSc programme launched in 2012.
• The project has paid particular attention to building capacity among women students, with the result that the project team and activities include female academic staff and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Statistical evidence of female participation rates is available, and questionnaires distributed to a sample of female researchers and subjects indicate high field participation rates for women, as researchers, research assistants, students and subjects. Brief recorded testimonies from women participants in 2013 indicate that the project has been important to them (source 8).
• This impact on teaching programmes and equality has been sufficiently positive for Bayero University Kano to seek to prolong input from RC-C and RM by offering them funded visiting research fellowships beyond the lifespan of the project (source 9).

Sources to corroborate the impact

[1] DelPHE case study of project (http://www.britishcouncil.org/delphe-celebrating-success.htm)

[2] Factual statement provided by member of British Council DelPHE Team.

[3] Recorded session of discussion with fuelwood sellers at 2012 conference (available on request).

[4] Factual statement provided by Developmental Association For Renewable Energies (DARE).

[5] Interview excerpts, Kano State Director of Forestry (available on request).

[6] Project website (http://bayerobirmbath-delphe.org/)

[7] Project partner Professor Tanko being interviewed on Freedom Radio Kano and on Nigerian Television Authority on project

[8] Female participants' podcast comments on their experience of the project (available on request)

[9] Factual statement provided by Registrar, Bayero University Kano.