Save Kenya – Cut the Talk and Plant the Trees

Kenya, from an international perspective, is a low forest cover country with less than 10 percent of the total land area considered forests, which is less than the United Nations requirement.

Most forest areas in the country have been degraded and destroyed through illegal logging, clearing of trees for farming among others. The Aberdare ranges, Mau complex, Cherangany hills, and Mt Elgon, Kenya’s key forested areas, have experienced massive destruction.

The Mau complex, for instance, has not recovered from the destruction of its indigenous trees it experienced between 2000 and 2005.

Unknown, or rather ignored by many, is that deforestation has far-reaching effects. Droughts, for instance, has encroached several parts of the country due to less rainfall. With the forests gone, rivers that once flowed with water aplenty now face imminent disappearance.

Several rivers, ponds, and wells in the Western part of the country have dried up. The situation is worse in places like Baringo and most parts in Northern Kenya. This has left many people traveling miles to fetch water – that is if they are lucky at all.

Other towns face water rationing due to the falling of the levels of water in their catchment areas.  The Sondu Miriu Hydroelectric Power Plant in Nyakach Constituency, Kisumu County is struggling to get enough water to drive its turbines.

Most rivers originating from Mt. Kenya are nowadays only identified by their rocky beds as they continue to disappear. There have been warnings that years to come, large water sources like L. Naivasha will disappear due to drying inlets.

As is evident, there is an immediate need to plant trees across the country. Although poverty has been associated with logging and increased deforestation, there are other alternative sources of energy apart from wood.

There have been several planting trees campaigns but most of them have not been successful so far. People haven’t been able to understand well that if trees continue to disappear, those who have no idea what global warming is will feel it first-hand.

The economy will be challenged. Water will disappear, temperatures will rise, farming will be unreliable, and that is when people will cry to the government for help.

Recently, the government has made major strides towards ameliorating the crisis. It banned logging and launched an ambitious project aimed at increasing the country’s forest cover from the current 7 percent to 15 percent by the year 2022.

The move, hopefully, will be successful as the country and its population should plant lots of trees. It is all for good reasons.

For one, trees hold the soil and ensure much of it isn’t carried away through erosion. Apart from sequestering carbon dioxide and producing oxygen, trees are the natural habitats for wildlife, which earns the country revenue.

City or urban dwellers are not the exceptions. Trees provide better livable conditions, they increase property value, and they decrease cost of energy. Also, if you want to attract customers to your business, make it environmentally healthy.

Trees also better your life health wise. They clean the air, they provide shades, and they also are the sources of many types of medicine human beings rely on.

Apparently, why we should plant trees cannot be emphasized enough. It isn’t only for the maintenance of water cycles, but for creating a sense of a place and make our country beautiful. This and other reasons are why we should join campaigns like the Planting Trees Initiative, #CutTheTalkPlantTheTrees.

The next tree planting day is on 31st March and is aimed at developing a proper communication plan to drive the tree planting agenda in a much bigger way across the country.

“We will be planting trees in Kabete and we are targeting to do 2000 trees on the day. We will also be introducing what we call the 1K trees challenge.

On this challenge, we will be encouraging Kenyans in their different groups; social, estates, church formation, office departments, companies, soccer teams and their followers, schools, colleges, whatever the group formations to together and plan to take the challenge of planting 1K trees on that day.

They will organize themselves, get their venue, fund their trees and plan for the nurture of the trees. Most importantly, they should have great fun with this and get to the point that “I didn’t know making my environment can be this much fun,” said the organizers of the #CutTheTalkPlantTheTrees campaign.