05/17 NFI NL: Inauguration of African Landscape of the Year

Accompanied by a colourful social programme, the first African Landscape of the Year will be officially inaugurated in January 2018. At the beginning of this month, Mamadou Mbodji, President of the African Naturefriends Network, and Ingeborg Pint, NFI consultant for Africa, travelled the region to coordinate the activities planned for the years 2018 and 2019 with locals. The Landscape of the Year Senegal/Gambia is the first Landscape of the Year on the African continent and thus assumes a special position. As a pilot project of the Naturefriends movement, it aims to illustrate how international solidarity can be put into practice in specific activities in the region and thus be sustainably established. The selected region lies on the edge of the Sahel zone and is already marked by the consequences of climate change. This is why climate justice plays a vital part in the planned activities. Accompanying activities in Europe aim at a broad involvement of European Naturefriends. Furthermore, Naturefriends journeys to the region intend to enable personal encounters and intensive exchange as well as foster gentle tourism in the region, which constitutes an important source of income for the local population.