Nairobi — The core business of the Kenya Armed Forces is to guard the country against external aggression, safeguard national interests and guarantee security to ensure the sanctity and sovereignty of Kenya.

Providing national security and deterring aggression is a task entrusted to soldiers worldwide. This role has been played effectively by our Armed Forces since independence.

Contemporary national security, however, embraces more than the traditional concept synonymous with the defence of national territory from external attacks.

New threats to national security include inter-ethnic wars that result from competition for resources and environmental disasters, both man-made and natural.

The Kenya Armed Forces have realised that our country is faced with a serious threat in the form of deforestation, environmental degradation and soil erosion.

It is for this reason that Kenya's military commanders led by the Chief of General Staff have come up with a unique military project dubbed Environmental Soldier Programme.

This is a movement towards a deeper commitment by soldiers to environmental protection through planting trees and taking care of the existing ones.

In collaboration with the Green Belt Movement and the Kenya Forest Service, the soldiers have expanded the programme to select forest sites whose continued destruction pose a challenge.

More than five million seedlings have been planted in the military cantonments, Kamae Forest, Mau Complex, Namkoi in Uasin Gishu, Gathiuru in Kieni, Embu, Meru, Makueni and coastal forest sites among others.

The requirements of security today embrace economic development, social justice and environmental protection since anything that degrades the quality of life impacts on security.

Kenyan soldiers have given the phrase "national security" a deeper meaning by establishing a link and symbiotic relationship between national security and the environment.

They appreciate that competition for limited resources such as land and water leads to conflict. Besides losing our fertile soil, the destruction of our key water pillars is causing significant, detrimental climate change.

The purpose of the "Environmental Soldier Programmme" is to undertake a focused and sustainable planting of trees as a conscious effort by the professional soldier cum-eco-warrior to guarantee total national defence.

Kenya has only two per cent forest cover. This is far much below the international standard requirement of 10 per cent.

Initiated in 2003 by the then Army Commander and now Chief of General Staff, General Jeremiah Kiang'a, the Environmental Soldier Programme is one of the civil initiatives whose aim is to improve and protect our environment.

In an effort to move the programme to a higher level, each soldier is given seedlings of different varieties to plant in their areas of domicile.

The aim is to motivate communities where they come from to plant trees, thus turning a larger population into eco-warriors.

The message by our soldiers to the common citizenry is that trees and forests are closely linked with weather patterns, and the task of environment protection is a responsibility for all of us.

It is extremely important that all Kenyans take a keen interest in environmental protection, and also implement this ideal by planting trees.

In this way, we will demonstrate our global concern and at the same time make our own little but significant contribution to the cause.

Mr Ongeri is assistant director of public communications, Ministry of State for Defence.