One Health in the Argan Forest

On the occasion of World Biodiversity Day in May, we organized the opening ceremony of the first One Health Garden of Aromatic and Medicinal Plants in Morocco.

This was made possible by much hard work form the whole field team during more than six months. A workshop was initially conducted with women from the argan oil cooperative to chose which species to grow, then a lot of work went into locating the plot where to grow the garden, fencing it against wild boar incursions, and setting up a reliable irrigation system.

The opening ceremony consisted in a morning of presentations about One Health and Biodiversity and the work of our One Health Association at the Medical Faculty Ibn Zohr in Agadir. The whole team of around twenty delegates then went to the garden in the douar of Aglagal where the garden is located near the women cooperative producing argan oil. 

This garden will not only allow for the cultivation of important aromatic and medicinal plants in the argan forest, but it will also allow for the transmission of invaluable traditional environmental knowledge to future generations. This is One Health in action for conserving a unique bio-cultural heritage which is critically important to Morocco and to the world's biodiversity. 

Links:

• Article referring to our work for World Biodiversity Day

Yes, we have finally been able to go back to the field despite the pandemic as movement restrictions have been lifted.

We were able to resume work to develop our first Village Garden for Aromatic and Medicinal Plants. This garden will be managed by a group of women from the village in order to improve families’ health, disseminate good practices about these plants and transmit very valuable environmental knowledge to young generations.

 We first organized a workshop with women in the village of different generations, in order to assess their knowledge in relation to these plants and to have them to decide and agree on which plants needed to be planted in the Village Garden.  This workshop  also allowed also to identify which women had the most knowledge about these plants and a student will continue to explore and document their environmental knowhow.

 After having fenced and installed the terrain which encompasses 400m2 and installed a water tank, our technician started to plants different species with other villagers along beautifully designed  patterns. School children will have education sessions there as well as practical training into permaculture.

 We managed to get started with limited funding and really need further support to continue to develop this activity. The transmission of traditional environmental knowledge to the young generation is a key component of our one Health programme in the argan forest, in order to improve health of all in this exceptional biodiversity hotspot.