"Just look at that hillside over there," Mary Kiptanui said pointing at a green hillside sparsely scattered with trees. "That used to be covered, a forest, and now there's hardly a tree in sight."
Mrs. Kiptanui should know. She started Kapkenda Girl's High School in Keiyo Marakwet county, western Kenya, in 1964 and has witnessed firsthand the region's rapid deforestation.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation, Kenya is classified among the countries with low forest cover with a dwindling 1.7 percent coverage.
"Things have gone bananas," says George Ondimu, the Project Director of a tree-planting project, the Forest Queens Beauty project. "There is a direct correlation between trees and climate change. Kenya's deforestation means rivers and dams have dried up, soil erosion has curtailed farming and more serious droughts and famine are on the horizon if we don't take tree planting seriously".
The patron of the project and the Permanent Secretary in Kenya's education ministry, James Ole Kiyiapi, agrees. "Africa, and Kenya in particular, is likely to face the most dramatic climate change and rainfall patterns being situated near the equator," the permanent secretary told a crowd of dignitaries and school children at a tree-planting ceremony held at Kapkenda High School last week.
The detrimental effects of climate change can be seen even in the seemingly lush Rift Valley. Bamboo trees used to be prevalent across the region, environmental consultant Kiplogat Wilson says. But now only a few bamboo trees can be seen in the highlands.
According to the head of the Kagoech Foundation, a trust devoted to tree planting and conservation, the dearth of bamboo and other trees is largely due to poverty and ignorance. "Kenyans still rely too much on wood for fuel and prefer clearing trees to plant. Soil erosion comes since people clear trees to plant maize and dig in the same area year after year," Kagoech Foundation Chief Executive Odieng Dimba said.
Tradition can also play a detrimental role for Kenya's forests. Some of the effects can be seen in the land near Lake Victoria, western Kenya, resident and environmental activist Argwings Odera says. As a passage of rite into adulthood, for instance, every male youth living near Lake Victoria must build a temporary house (known as a "Simba") requiring around 50 trees to build. "Imagine, in my own compound with four houses, over 200 trees were used for construction alone. And where we take trees, no one is re-planting."
But the traditional lifestyle of a regular Kenyan citizen only constitutes part of the deforestation problem. According to a recent environmental survey published by the Poverty and Environment Network, it is the highest earners, the top twenty percent, who deforest the most.
The government has licensed commercial logging companies to harvest trees from both indigenous and exotic forests unsustainably, the chairman of the Kagoech Foundation, Micah Kigen, says. Some of these logging companies are making huge profits selling timber on the black market with the approval of individuals in the government.
Kenya's National Environment Management Authority recently filed a case against another government department, the Kenya Forest Service, for harvesting 20 acres of Mt. Kenya Forest despite orders to stop, Kenya's daily The Nation reported. During the 24-year rule of Daniel Arap Moi, the forests were often given to political supporters as payment for political patronage.
One woman who defended Kenya's forests from Moi's extraction policies and suffered arrests, beatings and vilification because of her activism passed away last Sunday.
Professor Wangari Maathai was always a first. The first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, the first East African woman to earn a doctoral degree and possibly the first vocal activist to defend Kenya's forests. The Green Belt Movement, which she started in 1977, planted an estimated 45 million trees around Kenya and encouraged women in particular to plant trees for both environmental and economic development.
"Wangari Maathai was a force of nature," writes the director of the United Nation's Environmental Protection programme, Achim Steiner.
"While others deployed their power and life force to damage, degrade and extract short term profit from the environment, she used hers to stand in their way, mobilize communities and to argue for conservation and sustainable development over destruction."
Maathai became the patron of the UN's Billion Tree Campaign launched in 2006. Condolence messages continue to pour into Maathai's Facebook page, days after she succumbed to cancer on Sunday. Some of the messages expressed fear for Kenya's forests now that their greatest defender has passed away. But Maathai's vocal activism planted seeds for trees and seeds of inspiration within many Kenyans.
"The way she campaigned for conservation in the country, it went beyond the country -it became a global effort," Kigen said. "I took that concept of hers and brought it forward and that is how I found myself as an environmental activist."
Forest Queen's Director Ondimu shares similar sentiments. "She was the example of change we yearned for, her legacy has certainly affected us. As her followers, we will carry on with her vision to where it should have reached."
The Kagoech Foundation and the Forest Queens Beauty Project both aim to restore Kenya's forest cover by planting and maintaining 10 million trees in the next five years. The challenges are many given that attitudinal change must go hand in hand with the tree planting itself.
The Kagoech Foundation works with farmers and lumberjacks directly to introduce alternative income generating projects such as goat milk production and bee-keeping to end logging.
Both organisations are also targeting youth as the catalysts for this effort. The Forest Queen Beauty Project, for instance, holds an annual beauty pageant for the "Forest Queen" who acts a tree-planting ambassador, encouraging school students and others to plant trees.
"It's important to work with young people," 2011 Forest Queen Martha Mukami said, "they are more energetic and not set in their ways, through them I hope we can end years of bad environmental practice."
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So far the project, in conjunction with the government, has incorporated nearly 500 schools across the nation to take part in a tree-planting contest.
Last week, the Forest Queen Beauty project and Kagoech Foundation had their tree-planting launch at Kapkenda Girls High School, with government officials including Permanent Secretary Kiyiapi, planting a tree to mark the occasion.
Armies of pupils, Kenya's potential future conservationists, attended the event with proud principals sitting at their side. "Once our students are enlightened about the environment," says headmistress Jean Ngaaywa of Tendwo Secondary School, "they will pass on their knowledge to family and friends." Ngaywa's students have planted trees around the entire school compound and plan to plant many more.
"My students plant trees for the environment but they also appreciate the value of timber. Due to deforestation, timber is very expensive these days," said headmistress Susan Sawe of Kaptega Secondary School.
"My students know two or three trees will pay their school fees, so it pays to plant - for the country and for the self."
Professor Maathai may be smiling somewhere over these comments. The Nobel Prize in 2004 was meant not simply to promote environmental conservation but to prove to the world that tree planting was a form of economic and social development.
