Argan trees are so much more than just trees in rural Morocco. In many
However, most of them lack cash for expanding their businesses beyond just simple collecting nuts as conservative funding is not easily assessable for local cooperatives and farmers. Many villages throughout the Argan forest area lack the proper funding needed to open production facilities. Facilities like the women's Argan oil cooperatives have shown to be extremely beneficial to the development of local communities, providing women with paid employment for the first time in history. Without investments to produce their own oil and to sell it directly on-site to tourists, argan oil is often sold in Morocco at volumes 8-10 lower than in Europe. Without investing in the production and distribution process, Argan cooperatives are just getting a small fracture of the product value. And harvesting the trees can only be profitable if they are preserved – which is often problematic due to goats climbing the trees and hurting their health. New trees need to be planted, and existing ones preserved.
Apart from the economic value, Argan trees play a huge role in the natural ecosystem. With their incredibly deep roots (down to 35 meters!) they are stopping/slowing desertification by preserving
So, how can crowdfunding help in bringing the necessary funds to Argan oil cooperatives and make their business more sustainable - enabling them to plant new trees, buy oil processing machines and develop direct selling points? We hope to have first proofs soon – as through UNDP project "A Circular Economy Approach in the Souss-Massa Region of Morocco" we will connect the first cohort of women's Argan cooperatives to organizations already present in this field; such as Argan Care, which has been working on planting, rehabilitation, women's Argan oil cooperatives helping them with new equipment, facilities, general organizational skills and even literacy programs for the employees.
First, the KIVA crowdlending platform. KIVA has already done amazing things – such as brought over $ 1 billion to over 1,6 million lenders worldwide – elevating them from poverty by providing them small loans for micro and small businesses, usually invisible to large traditional financial institutions. And
Last year on the margin of the UN climate summit in Marrakesh, idea on payments for ecosystem services were presented as a
Authors:
Robert
Marina Petrovic, UNDP Alternative Finance Lab
Benedicte Westre Skog, Argan Care Foundation
Moha Haddouch, UNDP Morocco
Alternative Finance Lab (AltFin Lab) is an internal startup, run out of UNDP Istanbul Regional Hub for Europe and CIS