Discover interview of Jane Goodall . Surprisingly, there is a bit about development and microfinance. Excerpts:
"I didn’t care about a degree—I just wanted to learn."
"What is wrong with current African aid programs?
People are given cash. I think the reason our reforestation and education program, TACARE [Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education], has worked so well is that we don’t do this. We’ve invested money into projects but only after sitting down with the locals—our Tanzanian team members do the talking, not us, not white people. So the villagers buy into our projects; they choose them. Microcredit [loans of less than $200] is the way forward, as long as you determine that the project these poor villagers want to develop is environmentally sustainable—that’s key.
How do you persuade people who barely have enough to eat that they need to lead “environmentally sustainable” lives?
TACARE works to improve the people’s lives through better farming, getting scholarships for girls to go to secondary school, HIV-AIDS information, family planning, health care, and especially helping women and children—because all around the world as women’s education improves, family size goes down. Right now more people are living on the land than it can support. And we do our youth program, Roots & Shoots, both inside and outside the villages. As a result, the villagers are now allowing the tree stumps that look dead to regenerate instead of hacking away at them for firewood. We’ve already seen trees coming back around many of these villages. The whole plan is to persuade the villagers to leave not their best but their worst land—land that chimps can travel through. Then our Gombe chimps will no longer be trapped within the tiny park."
