Forest restoration in Kenya
Context
Kenya is a large country in East Africa, situated between Lake Victoria to the West and the Indian Ocean to the East. Its capital, Nairobi, is a large regional commercial hub, and its economy is heavily reliant on two particular sectors as sources of external revenue: agriculture and tourism.
Food security and poverty have been key development challenges in Kenya, with some sources finding that around 36% of the Kenyan population live below the poverty line.
In the Mau Region, challenges for local people include limited access to fresh water, poor road infrastructure, and insufficient education facilities. The Mau forest itself contains many rivers which feed into Lake Victoria to the West, impacting millions of people’s lives.
Deforestation which has taken place in this region particularly since the 1970s – to support agriculture, charcoal production and livestock – has caused widespread degradation of the land, and when combined with recent droughts in the region has caused severe hydrological damage throughout local watersheds.
Planting Partner
Our projects in Kenya are run by Eden Reforestation Projects (‘Eden’) – a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to provide fair-wage employment to impoverished villagers as agents of global forest restoration.
Eden hire local people to grow, plant, and guard to maturity the trees planted through funding from our community – on a massive scale. As well as restoring forest ecosystems, Eden’s “Employ to Plant” methodology results in multiple positive socioeconomic and environment impacts.
Afromontane reforestation in Mau, Kenya
The Kass FM project site is located in the Mau Region of Southern Kenya, covering six individually-defined reforestation areas totalling 5,700 hectares in area. The land itself is owned by the local community and will be planted by local community members from the region.
Using an “employ-to-plant” methodology provides a consistent income in sustainable land-use practices for the local people who are employed as planters, nursery staff, and forest guards as part of the project activity. This consistent income allows the local community to achieve greater levels of access to education, nutrition and healthcare.
Over the large area of the site and the 7-year project period, it is estimated that around 14.25 million afromontane trees will be planted across the Kass FM planting site, thanks to the support of our Ecologi community.
Explore the project on Restor here.
Latest Site Update
In September 2022, 4 of the Ecologi team were lucky enough to travel to Kenya to visit this project. We were blown away by the beauty of the planting site and nurseries, the warm welcome we received, and the diligence of every member of the Eden Reforestation Projects team. The seedlings in the nurseries are so well cared for by the Eden team, and the passion for the project and the trees among the nursery workers and the planting team was clear. We’re delighted to be able to share some photos and a video from our trip with you here.
The nurseries at Tendwet and Nkoben were so beautiful, complete with tall, mature trees providing shade to the seedlings. Each bed of seedlings was labelled with a hand-painted sign showing the local name and the Latin name of the species within the bed.
The staff showed us the tree planting process of clearing grass and weeds from a patch of earth, making a hole for the seedling to go in, putting the seedling in the ground and pressing the soil around the seedling to secure it in place. The seedlings were then given a good drink of water to help them settle into their new home. We even got to plant a couple of trees ourselves, with the Eden staff watching on to make sure we maintained their high standards!
The Eden team took us to see some trees that had been planted on the site a few months before our visit, and we were amazed at the growth of the trees in that time. The first photo below shows our CEO and co-founder Elliot with a tree that was planted just 7 months beforehand – it was already over 6 feet tall! We can’t wait to return in a few years’ time to see how big all the trees have grown, and the difference this will have on the local environment and local people’s lives.
Climate Solution #15
Temperate Forest Restoration
The world’s 1.9 billion acres of temperate forests are a net-carbon sink. According to the World Resources Institute, more than 1.4 billion additional acres are candidates for restoration—either large-scale, closed forest or mixed mosaics of forests, more sparsely growing trees, and land uses such as agriculture. With restoration comes additional carbon sequestration.
While temperate forests are not threatened by the same large-scale deforestation that afflicts the tropics, they continue to be fragmented by development. They also are experiencing hotter and more frequent droughts, longer heat waves, and more severe wildfires, as well as worsening insect and pathogen outbreaks. These disturbances can push temperate forests beyond their capacity for resilience.