The Size of Wales is a unique project that aims to conserve an area of tropical rainforest the size of Wales. The project currently supports fourteen forest projects worldwide and links them to supporters in Wales. Size of Wales encourages people to support rainforest conservation as a national response to climate change.
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Wales is 2 million hectares in size. Put another way - that's 2 million rugby pitches. 'An area the size of Wales' is frequently used to measure the rate of forest destruction. The Size of Wales aims to turn that negative use of the country's size on its head, by encouraging the people of Wales to take positive action and help protect an area of tropical forest equivalent to the size of their nation. BBC Radio 4's numbers programme More or Less uses the size of Wales as a scale of measurement. In this scale a milliwales (1/1000 of a Wales) is Barry, whilst a deciwales (1/10 of a Wales) is Snowdonia National Park and a hectowales (100 Wales') is Saudi Arabia.
As part of a national response to climate change, the following projects are supported:
Fauna and Flora International and the Ntakata forest reserve The project aims to enable the Tongwe Trust, and the villages it supports, to protect, monitor and manage the Ntakata Village Land Forest Reserve in an area threatened by deforestation and future platinum/nickel mining projects.
Lampeter/Bore Community Carbon Link Links the communities of Bore and Lampeter through the medium of carbon by sponsoring tree planting and forest conservation with the partner community in Kenya.
Pronatura Elephant forest Sanctuary in Nigeria This project will establish an elephant sanctuary in the remaining natural forest. The newly protected area will help ensure local livelihoods continue and be the first forest project in Nigeria to access carbon credits.
Trees for Cities' Community Fruit Tree Project. Planting 12,000 fruiting trees over a period of three years in areas of extreme deprivation within the city of Addis Ababa.
Lives and Landscapes Project, Cameroon. This project will support MIFCIG in developing agroforestry practices and apiary techniques to help people earn a better living from the land they have outside the forest, and thus avoid opening of new farmland at the expense of forestland.
Environment Africa Trust and the Mpingo Conservation Project: Establishing a new community-managed forest in Kikole village.
Tree Aid's Tominian Trees for Trade: Uses native trees that are adapted to the arid landscape to produce marketable goods. Villagers are given the skills and equipment needed to create tree based businesses.
The Green Belt Movement's Tree Planting in Mount Kenya Ecosystem project.
One Million Trees, Uganda: Pont/Mbale support the people of Mbale to reforest an area of Uganda.
Madagasikara Voakajy is supporting communities to manage the forest that supports them and the rare Golden Mantella frog in Madagascar.
Well Grounded support organisations in the Congo basin enabling the local community to identify and map customary forest land in 150,000 hectares of forest with a view to obtaining formal commercial rights to the area.
WWF Protecting Eastern Africa Coastal forest: WWF are focusing activities on three areas of forest in Coastal Kenya and Tanzania to halt forest decline.
African Galapagos, Tanzania: TFCG are working with over 30,000 people in the Rubeho Mountains, the project will provide sustainable development opportunities, develop effective forest management and conserve forest resources; removing destructive use of the forests and improving incomes.
RSPB's Gola Forest National Park: This project aims to ensure that the area is protected in perpetuity and that the people who live around it benefit from its protection.
The Forest Project Partners are:
The following are supporting members of the Size of Wales project:
Size of Wales website http://www.sizeofwales.org.uk/