"Freetown Treetown" with Amos Saati, Freetown, Siera Leone

[00:00:00] Piers Clark: Welcome to the Exec Exchange, 15-minute podcast in which a leader from the water sector shares a story to inspire, inform, and educate other water sector leaders around the world. My name is Piers Clark and my guest today is Amos Saati, from Freetown in Sierra Leone. And we are going to be talking about an initiative, which I think we proudly call "Freetown Tree Town".
[00:00:23] Piers Clark: Amos, wonderful to have you join me today.
[00:00:26] Amos Saati: Thank you.
[00:00:27] Piers Clark: Now, we always start by trying to find out a little bit about our speaker. So tell me, what did you do before you were in the role you are in now? How did you get into this role?
[00:00:36] Amos Saati: I used to be a technical advisor with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, embedded in Sierra Leone Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, where I support the minister to implement transformative strategies and also support smallholder farmers to get inputs that will lead to food security.
[00:00:55] Piers Clark: Excellent. Sounds like a great job. And the reason we're talking to you today is because you've been the brains behind the green infrastructure investments at Freetown in Sierra Leone.
[00:01:06] Piers Clark: Now, I'm hoping that other people have got better geography than me, but let's start with, where is Sierra Leone?
[00:01:11] Piers Clark: How many people live in the country? And then tell me about Freetown.
[00:01:15] Amos Saati: Sierra Leon is in western part of Africa. It's an amazing country with 8.2 million population. It's a symbolic for a Lion Mountain, when it was discovered by Pedro da Cintra many, many years ago. Freetown is the capital city and we have got 1.3 million people that are in Freetown.
[00:01:37] Amos Saati: Currently, the city has been led by a very transformative woman called Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, OBE, and she has been in office since 2018. She's the first mayor in Freetown to have been re-elected for a second term, which shows how much job she has done since she took power. Currently, she is also vying in as a flag bearer for the 2028 elections.
[00:01:59] Amos Saati: It's an amazing time for Freetownians and Sierra Leonians as well. Freetown is indeed beautiful, one of the country that has got beautiful beaches as well. Good for tourism.
[00:02:09] Piers Clark: This is an audio podcast and so the people listening won't be able to see how your face completely lit up when you started talking. You are clearly very proud of your country and very proud of your city.
[00:02:19] Piers Clark: We've got a West African city serving 1.3 million people. And the reason we are talking today is because I heard one of your colleagues speak at an event in Singapore earlier this year, and the event was around flood management and water resource management.
[00:02:35] Piers Clark: And they mentioned this initiative called "Freetown Tree Town", and I believe you were the brains behind this. So now, tell me why was this initiative created and what did it involve?
[00:02:47] Amos Saati: Climate risk in Freetown is exacerbated by intense deforestation, driven by the unregulated expansion from people within the rural to the urban area.
[00:02:57] Amos Saati: People coming out from the rural part of Western area to the urban part of Western area. And in fact, Freetown is currently losing over 500,000 trees every year according to the World Bank Multi-city Hazard Report.
[00:03:11] Piers Clark: So you've got unregulated destruction of trees as the rural population move into the urban areas.
[00:03:17] Amos Saati: Yes, we have trees cut down within our water reserve for house construction. People are migrating and then they need places to stay. If the current trend of tree loss continues, we risk losing all tree which could result in a complete water shortage for people living in the Western area, particularly in Freetown.
[00:03:40] Amos Saati: That was the idea behind planting trees to ensure that we save the environment that will lead to reduction of floods, reduction of landslide ' cause when we plant more trees in where there have been slope destabilization, there will be stabilization and also improve water storage. And also reduce extreme heat because with no trees we are vulnerable to the directory of the sun. And with more trees, we have high level of shades.
[00:04:05] Piers Clark: It's been proven many times that the more trees you have in the city, the cooler the city is for people to live in. So many people would go, all right, we're gonna have a scheme to plant some trees.
[00:04:15] Piers Clark: Now, can you share a bit about the scale at which you've done things in Freetown?
[00:04:19] Amos Saati: With support from the World Bank group, we started planting in 2020, with 250,000 trees. And those trees that we planted, 60% were designed to protect our water sources, and 30% were for backyards.
[00:04:35] Amos Saati: We work with community people and we plant these economic trees like oranges, mangoes, guava in their backyard that will bring in benefits. These are trees that will ensure that these people are protected because once they're grown, they give them shade, they give them food.
[00:04:54] Amos Saati: And also how the project is designed, we incentivize community because one of the reason people are cutting down the trees is for charcoal production. So, those communities that live near the trees are being hired to protect the trees, and they are paid every month. And also into the coastal area, those that are doing the mangroves are also hired to protect the mangroves
[00:05:16] Amos Saati: We also bring them out of those harmful practices and give them an alternative.
[00:05:22] Amos Saati: Also, we just don't plant, we also track the trees because we wanted to enter into the carbon market so we understand how many trees are there, what are they sequestering, which gives us value into the carbon market. So, we are planting the trees to protect our water sources, to change people's socioeconomic lives, to ensure that we have a protected and a sustainable environment where everyone can thrive.
[00:05:47] Piers Clark: It's such a brilliant project. 60% to preserve the water resources and 30% to create commercial value. I am just curious, can you share further who gets to harvest them and monetize them.
[00:06:00] Amos Saati: We have got over 166 reforestation areas across the Western area. How we design the planting, we go into community and they share with us where these trees need to be planted. So whatever comes out of that tree that has been planted is owned by the community.
[00:06:17] Piers Clark: Do you know how many of the 250,000 trees that you planted in 2020 are still alive?
[00:06:22] Amos Saati: We just completed a universal tracking of the trees that were planted from 2020 'til 2024. Our portfolio right now take us to 1.2 million trees that include mangroves that have been planted, and the analysis that we have done shows us that we are at 61% survival rate.
[00:06:40] Amos Saati: We have not completely analyzed the data that has been synced in because we have a process wherein we have an in-house team that does the manual verification. We have a team that approve the tree or rejects the tree. So a rejection can be, you didn't track the tree very well and approved can be, you track the tree very well.
[00:06:59] Amos Saati: So we are at 61% right now because we have not completely analyzed the survivability of the rejected trees that have been done. So, we are optimistic that once that detailed analysis is done, we are gonna have increase of the survival rate. We are moving to technology now where we are gonna be leveraging AI to do that for us.
[00:07:17] Piers Clark: Anyone with a sort of horticultural background will recognize that when you plant a whip, a very young tree, its chances of survival are much greater, than if you plant a more mature tree.
[00:07:28] Piers Clark: Amos, tell me how old are the trees you are planting?
[00:07:30] Amos Saati: We are not planting mature trees. We are planting seedlings. We do source them from nurseries, and let's say we are planting in July, we start telling them to start nursing the trees in January so each tree that we are planting is about six to seven months old that goes into the ground.
[00:07:48] Amos Saati: We have a team of growers and tracker. Their role is to ensure that tree survived between seven months to three years old. They're incentivized every month to ensure that they care for the tree and they track, the tree, and sync that data into our system, which will then enable us to see how the tree is growing because we have a technology that we develop with Greenstand Technology firm that is based between US and Tanzinia that are supporting us to visualize the trees that are on the ground in the office.
[00:08:17] Piers Clark: One of the things I love here is that you are planting trees for the future generations. So the trees that were planted in 2020 were little seedlings. Now they're five years old. They're probably getting to the scale where they're casting a bit of shade, they're generating fruit, and of course, in 20 years time, it's going to absolutely change how those areas look.
[00:08:36] Piers Clark: I assume you are hoping to still be around to watch this. You'll still be working part of Freetown and seeing the fruits of your labor.
[00:08:42] Amos Saati: Exactly. I'm really excited even now that we've just spent like five years in planting those trees. In 2017, we had a deadly mudslide that happened in Sierra Leone. The area that the mudslide happened was demarcated by the government as a no-go area. When the mayor came into the office through the initiative, we did forestry planting there. So, if you go down to that area, you'll see it's being forested.
[00:09:06] Amos Saati: These were trees that are planted in 2020. They are already matured, and these are trees that we don't pay growers and trackers anymore to take care of because they're already big enough to survive for themself. And also in the backyards where we have planted economic trees, we have people benefiting from the oranges, from the apples, from the guava, from the mangoes that have been planted since 2020.
[00:09:29] Amos Saati: Those trees are not being properly cared for because they have reached a stage where they can survive on their own. The reason we work with communities, even though we do not pay them formally to guide the process, is that they benefit from the fruits. This also helps ensure the trees are not cut down because the communities are preventing others from cutting them down.
[00:09:50] Piers Clark: That's actually a brilliant plan because the community benefits and defends the trees.
[00:09:54] Piers Clark: Going back a bit, earlier you mentioned 60% of the trees are for protecting the water resources. How's that working? Have you got data around that and how do they protect the water resources?
[00:10:04] Amos Saati: So we got really high rate of encroachment into the water sources, people grabbing land, people cutting down the trees, even for the safety of the water, the health of the water. If you've got people building very close to this water sources, the health of the water is not guaranteed.
[00:10:21] Amos Saati: If you're building a house, of course you wanna have a septic tank. We've seen situation over the years where people houses are very close to the water sources. With the aid of the central government, we have collaborated in planting those trees there to ensure that the water health is preserved.
[00:10:41] Amos Saati: Those that understand the science behind how water is formed will definitely agree that the more trees, the more guarantee you have of water being sustained into those reservoirs.
[00:10:52] Piers Clark: Brilliant, you’re absolutely correct. Now just to summarize what we’ve discussed, what we've got is a city with 1.3 million people, you've planted 1.2 million trees over the last five years, and these are to sequester carbon, protect the water resources, and provide economic benefit to the communities.
[00:11:05] Piers Clark: You could have stuck up great big fences or something to keep people away from it, but actually this is a much more innovative way of preserving, doing that zoning to protect your water resource areas and therefore protect the water quality. And yet at the same time, you've created economic impact by having trees that are bearing fruit. And you are paying people to preserve and protect and monitor these trees, thereby creating a whole cottage industry in its own right. It's such a clever plan. I hope it's a model that other cities around the world might be able to accommodate and copy.
[00:11:38] Piers Clark: Now, we're running out of time, so I'd like to finish with just asking you if you could get in a time machine and go back 20 years and talk to a young Amos Saati, what advice would you give him?
[00:11:50] Amos Saati: I will definitely tell that person to invest more in learning and skills early. I've seen younger people that have really spent time in investing in learning and skill early being very productive, having an enthusiasm about being an agent of change through social entrepreneurship. We have seen a lot of impact being done through people that are solving problems.
[00:12:12] Amos Saati: Investing in learning and getting the skills and also using those skills in bringing change in communities or in your society or in your country. That will definitely be of good, significant and will ensure that you are not only productive, but you're also creating an impact in society.
[00:12:30] Piers Clark: Brilliant. You have been listening to the Exec Exchange with me Piers Clark, and my guest today has been Amos Saati from Freetown in Sierra Leone, and we've been talking about "Freetown Tree Town".
[00:12:44] Piers Clark: I hope you can join me next time. Thank you very much.