Wamugunda Geteria
28 August 2007
opinion
Nairobi — EIGHTY PER CENT OF KENYANS depend on State, local authorities and private forests for their energy needs. Our wooden Akamba carvings are on top of world trade artefacts, earning the nation Sh1.5 billion in foreign exchange and supporting half a million families.
India, China and Ethiopia earn billions from bamboo furniture and other utility items while we watch our bamboo rot away. We have, for the last 20 years neglected the forestry profession and let environmental war-mongers run down the practice of sustainable development through management.
The Forests Act No 7 of 2005, is a call for armies of tree planters, banks, investors, sawmillers, development partners and foresters to join the war on poverty.
The dormant Professional Association of Practising Foresters and those in research institutions and universities known as the Kenya Forestry Society, has been re-branded the Forestry Society of Kenya. It holds its second scientific conference at the end of this month in Kikambala, Kilifi District, and we promise to change the face of forestry.
All members are talking of making a complete break with the past which has fanned poverty. The past saw inequity practised in forests; negligence and abuse of a valuable natural heritage.
It was sheer madness to kill 400 sawmills, destroy 100 forest estates, and display complete lack of feelings for forest dwellers who for years practised the best agro-forestry in the world - men and women who farmed maize, kale, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, peas and pyrethrum while ensuring our trees grew well.
This country, with the best tree growth rates in the world, produced all its needs in timber out of a mere 10 per cent of state forests. Powerful politicians, however, destroyed this within a year, claiming they were protecting the forests.
THE KENYA FORESTRY SERVICE HAS been flagged off and an experienced professional forester has been appointed its chief executive.
The board of management has been chosen and it now rests upon the shoulders of foresters, and Kenyans in general, to reconstruct, enrich, use sustainably and conserve for future generations, our rich biodiversity.
The first task entails more positive attitude towards charcoal, tree harvesting, bamboo, eucalyptus trees, indigenous forests, kayas, groves, arboreta, national parks, hills, rivers, wildlife, forest dwellers and all others that affect forests.
Hunting charcoal-makers, raping women as they collect fodder and firewood, raiding honey gatherers and persecuting timber millers instead of managing them should be condemned.
The Forestry Society of Kenya now urges the Government to expunge all those bans imposed on charcoal production, timber logging, bamboo cutting, afforestation using the shamba system, and use of unendangered indigenous trees.
The bans, including those that removed sawmills out of state forests, were unjustified. A forestry masterplan (1995-2020), sits on the shelves staring at all of us. Kefri has produced charcoal whose calorific value compares with anthracite coal, beer and chapattis from prosopis juliflora (the mathenge plant condemned by the Jemps).
By the year 2030, we should have replanted all our forests, reconstructed efficient mills, made modern charcoal kilns available to all villages, extinguished the need for ever importing structural timber, produced jobs for all communities living around forests, and made sure that no one needs walk more than a kilometre in search of fodder or firewood.
Mr Geteria is a member, Forestry Society of Kenya.
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