To fight deforestation, Kenya in poverty ($857 GDP/capita) pledges to spend $20 billion & plant 7.6 billion trees

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The Environment ministry is set to roll out a Sh1.5 trillion climate change response investment plan to be implement over the next 20 years. Some 35,000 schools, 4,300 women’s groups and 16,350 youth groups will be involved in a major campaign to plant trees under the plan. The plan is to be implemented together with the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife. In a speech read for him by a ministry official in Kisumu, the Environment and Natural Resources minister John Michuki said the government was developing a comprehensive policy to guide the implementation of the initiatives to reduce the negative effects of climate change.

Mr Michuki said that if every Kenyan planted 10 trees in a year then it would be possible to recreate the lost forest cover in less than five years. He said, “Climate change and all the underlying negative effects have emerged as one of the most challenging global issues of the 21st century. “Responding to climate change is therefore a priority both for Kenya and the entire world,” said Mr Michuki. Kenya, the minister said, faced challenges of how to mitigate and respond to climate change, whose effects include an upsurge in incidence and severity of extreme climatic events, leading to floods, droughts and landslides. The impact of forest destruction is being felt by Kenyans, with rivers drying up and hydro-electric power generation, farm production and tourism all suffering as a result. Kenya's biggest forest, the Mau, has lost a quarter of its 400,000 hectares in recent years to unchecked human settlement, illegal logging and the burning of charcoal.

Kenya said it would plant 7.6 billion trees over the next 20 years to redress decades of chopping down forest cover, the effect of which is now being felt in acute water and power shortages. Just 3% of land in the agriculture-based east African economy is covered by forests that are protected by the authorities, compared with a government target of 10 percent. "We will have to plant 4.1 million hectares in order to make a percentage that is internationally acceptable," Environment Minister John Michuki told reporters. "You are talking about 7.6 billion trees," he said. "In my estimation, it is going to cost us $20 billion over 20 years." That amount is nearly twice the government's annual spending, which will be about $11 billion in fiscal 2009/10.

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Photos courtesy of ecotourismkenya.org, kenya.careofcreation.net, Mia MacDonald / greenbeltmovement.org, Wikipedia, Alan Dater and Lisa Merton/Marlboro Productions,

Original Source: Daily Nation, Reuters, and wikipedia