Chris Mburu
6 October 2003
Nairobi — Two weeks after the conclusion of the Second East African Business Summit, held at the Mt Kenya Safari Club, Athi River Mining managing director Pradeep Paunrana is having sleepiness nights.
His job? To lay down a private sector-led strategy to oversee the planting of 60 million trees a year in East Africa by the end of September 2004.
Planting 20 million trees in Kenya and a similar number in Uganda and Tanzania, and nurturing them to maturity, is ambitious but not impossible. Over the past 10 years, Tanzania's environmental conservation champion and chairman of the IPP Group, Reginald Mengi, has overseen the planting of 20 million trees, out of which 17 million have survived.
In contrast, Kenya has lost over two billion trees since independence. Even if the country were to grow 20 million trees a year for the next 70 years, the resulting 1.4 billion trees would be nowhere near the 1963 forest cover.
"Still, I have been doing some research locally and on the Internet; the problem is gigantic. Planting 20 million in Kenya is not going to be easy; over the past three decades, we have had a whole generation of people who do not know how to care for the environment," Mr Paunrana told The EastAfrican in an interview.
"Where do we start? There are four main challenges; getting adequate seedlings, getting water for the seedlings, getting the co-operation of both big and small businesses, and involving local communities.
"We need the right seeds, the quick maturing type. We know from our ARM afforestation programmes that there are five different species of quick maturing trees such as casuarina that can grow in different areas of Kenya. These should also be the nitrogen-fixing type, and the leaves must be edible by livestock and suitable for manure," says Mr Paunrana.
In Borneo, Indonesia, a Food and Agricultural Organisation-supported programme has used tissue culture to generate seedlings quickly. "We are trying to find out what we can borrow from that initiative," Mr Paunrana says.
Without seeds, no trees will be planted. Luckily, the Tanzania forest department has a well stocked seed bank, and Kenya might have to borrow seeds and expertise from them.
Meanwhile, the EABS's environment group is contacting government officials, NGOs, private farms and private companies to establish the available stocks of the required tree seedlings. "We have to think of commercialisation of tree planting," Mr Paunrana says.
Doubtless, the initiative will have to learn from the tree-planting and farming experiences of big commercial enterprise, such as Kakuzi Ltd, Rai Ply and Pan Paper Mills of Webuye. Large horticultural farms such as HomeGrown and Sher Agencies will be brought on board.
As Kenya Airports Authority managing director George Muhoho said at the summit, there are also several horticultural farms with the expertise and the infrastructure to grow seedlings with a little financial support.
When ARM started an afforestation programme at their Kaloleni mines in Coast Province five years ago, they found that tree seedlings were being stolen by the local community. "We had to deal with the local community. We got seven women's groups. We gave them about Ksh20,000 ($265) each as seed money plus seedlings, and they have been selling seedlings to us at Ksh10 (US 13 cents) per seedling," Mr Paunrana says.
And after bringing on board a few primary schools, which has increased the supply of seedlings to the community at a fee, theft of seedlings at the Kaloleni site abated. Over 70,000 seedlings have been produced in the past four years.
"There is a huge demand for tree seedlings by local communities. At our Kajiado site, some Maasai farmers have been uprooting our seedlings, which they find 'exotic' to go and plant elsewhere," says Mr Paunrana.
To encourage afforestation, there is also a need to promote bee-keeping, since bees assist in pollinating plants, leading to seed production, Mr Paurana says.
The private sector effort will need support, co-operation and the expertise of conservation groups, non-governmental organisations, and departments of foreign missions involved in afforestation, as well as the governments - the Ministries of Environment and Water, National Environment Management Authorities and Forestry Research Institutes.
While "social responsibility" can be used as a lever to raise funds from the private sector, the tree-planting group of the Summit also plans to tap into international bodies, such as Unep.
The media is expected to disseminate information on fundraising campaigns. "The Working Group will lobby the Media Owners Association to treat the environment as a matter of national priority and allocate sizeable airtime in partnership with the private-sector sponsorship," says Mr Paunrana.
Kenya's forest cover has declined from an estimated 30 per cent of the land area in the early 1960s to to less than two per cent today. This has happened through illegal logging to satisfy the demand for firewood, charcoal and the wood carving industry.
Deforestation has also been caused by corruption and extension of settlements in formerly forested areas by a growing, impoverished population, according to the presentation of the Environment discussion group at the summit.
With tree champions like Mr Mengi, the private sector might succeed where governments have failed.
Chris Mburu is a Nairobi-based Special Correspondent for The EastAfrican
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