A Note on our Work in a Difficult Time - Finding Community and Solidarity

By Community Forests International, Posted on March 27, 2025

The abrupt shutdown of USAID has had devastating consequences, cutting off life-saving medicine and food without warning.

In Tanzania, where we work, climate-resilience programs that once helped communities withstand droughts have been canceled, leaving people struggling without the support they relied on. This harmful decision has had immediate impacts on the communities we partner with and many others around the world.

Our minds are on vulnerable people in the U.S. who are facing the loss of civil rights, the removal of protections for national forests, and the weakening of democracy itself:

The Black and racialized people who continue, after centuries, to fight daily for their right to exist in peace; Immigrants and their families facing harassment and unjust separation; Muslim-American citizens, Palestinian Americans and their outspoken allies advocating for a free and safe Palestine; People seeking reproductive care; Government workers and their uphill battle to sustain essential social services, even as their own jobs are stripped away; Indigenous Nations and Peoples across Turtle Island seeking their sovereignty; and the LGBTQ2S+ communities and the most vulnerable within them who are seeing their identities bureaucratically erased…

Here in the Maritimes, and in the communities where we work most closely, we’re watching from a distance and also feeling the impact – local forestry workers have become caught in a trade war that’s crushing businesses and driving up the cost of living for everyone. With 70% of Atlantic Canada’s lumber sent to the U.S. for home construction, these tariffs threaten to upend an entire industry, leaving workers in uncertainty. 

As an organization whose mission is to work alongside those struggling to care for their forests and local communities in the face of climate change, and those striving for Land Back and reconciliation, we have an obligation to respond in a way that supports the communities we are allied with and also makes it unmistakably clear that we stand in solidarity with them.

We’re also asking: how do people and organizations navigate times like this? Our colleagues and friends from the Zanzibar islands, experts in resilience, have taught us so many lessons. Black and Indigenous communities continue to show us what it means to adapt, endure, and work with the challenges of both nature and humanity.

In 2020, when the first shutdowns of the COVID 19 pandemic reached Zanzibar, the islands’ residents and Community Forests Pemba’s staff noticed early warning signs that the food supply to the islands was becoming less reliable. As a community, they quickly mobilized an emergency seed collection and food-growing effort alongside thousands of farmers to help people through the difficult times. 

This community based, immediate action from our Zanzibari colleagues is the same kind of action we need to take now. We need to listen to the often ignored voices of those most marginalized to continually seek stronger connection – between each other, and between people and the natural world – to help us act together for change.

We are reminding ourselves what community means at a time when it means the most. We know many of you have been doing the same, finding connections and strengthening ties that can withstand the storm. We are together in this.