Growing Back the Catchments that Feed Lake Tanganyika

Association Burundaise pour la Protection de la Nature, founded in 2000 as Burundi's national bird conservation body and renamed ABN in 2013, now runs climate-adaptation programs across the country's protected watersheds. In the Ruhwa and Muhira catchments of the Lake Tanganyika basin, ABN organized more than 260 community members to build tree nursery beds that raised over 834,000 seedlings for reforesting eroded, high-altitude farmland, while distributing thousands of fruit trees to farmers in Cibitoke Province to diversify incomes. In 2025 ABN extended this model to the transboundary Lake Kivu-Rusizi River basin, exchanging restoration techniques with partner organizations in Rwanda and the DR Congo.