Many delegates at the Copenhagen Climate Change conference hope that reforestation, reduced deforestation and forest degradation (popularly known as REDD +) will be incorporated into the agreement that comes out of Copenhagen and help restore, conserve and protect forests of the world.

Forests are important because science informs that almost 17- 20 per cent of greenhouse gases (ghs) especially CO2, come from deforestation and forest degradation.

Delegates hope that they can agree that temperatures should not be allowed to rise by more than 1.5 C.

There seems to be a consensus that forests be part of the solutions to climate change.

But forests are important to us for many other reasons besides carbon.

For example, forests generate essential environmental goods and services such as water, food, fuel, income and medicine.

In Africa, poverty is one of the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation.

This is because poor communities need firewood and charcoal to cook and warm their homes.

The need to provide alternative sources of energy will come from the government that needs the political will to prioritise provision of electricity especially for the rural populations and urban poor.

The proposed financial resources from Copenhagen could be used to increase investments in wind, solar and hydropower.

Poor communities also encroach on forests to graze livestock, expand agricultural lands and grow commercial monocultures for export.

Yet, hydro-power is dependent on healthy forests, which receive and retain rainwater and keep streams and rivers flowing into dams, where electricity is generated.

Destroying forests undermines the capacity to generate hydropower and promote economic growth.

Protecting national forests is therefore, very essential.

Indeed the recent experience of a prolonged drought in Kenya serves as an example of how deforestation and forest degradation can contribute to a national economic crisis.

Hydro-power accounts for up to 70 per cent of electricity in the country, and with the dam closed due lack of adequate water in the dams, electricity had to be rationed.

Without electricity, the national economy was greatly undermined and jobs were lost while due to crop failure over ten million people faced starvation and diseases associated with malnutrition.

Sustainable management of forests is therefore, in the national interest of countries.

Because of their role as carbon sinks and generators of the other environmental goods and services, forests have also now captured the interest of the world.

The Green Belt Movement is engaged in forest restoration through direct planting of trees on degraded areas in CDM pilots that are being implemented in partnership with the Kenya Forestry Service (KFS) and the World Bank.

For us to benefit from REDD+, the government will have to revisit its policy of allowing cultivation of food crops in forests, planting of monoculture commercial plantations of exotic trees (shamba system), and grazing of livestock in the forests.

In countries with large forests like Brazil or Congo, people may be able to graze in the forests and also have carbon sites.

But Kenya does not even have the 10 percent forest cover recommended by the United Nations.

That is why the recent recommendation by the Minister for Environment and Mineral Resources, John Michuki, that every farmer put 10 per cent of their land under trees, should be made legal.

It would increase the number of trees in the country and the capacity for the carbon market and because farmers would have their own trees on farms, there would be less pressure on forests.

Prof Maathai is the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.