The government has initiated a massive environmental rehabilitation effort in the Mau Forest, an important water source area for Kenya, covering 33,000 hectares.
While at the launch in Nakuru County, Kuresoi North, Sirikwa, the President reaffirmed that this undertaking of forest restoration is a national one and hence, among other contributions, each stakeholder, the government, local communities, and private sector, must there participate.
“To us forest conservation is community-based and we have therefore transformed it into a means-of-livelihood-sector,” President Ruto asserted. “This enables communities bordering on forests to not only co-managers in conservation but also, non-depleters.”
The Mau Forest Restoration Programme is facilitating 148,000 farmers in the implementation of 50 nature-based value chains to enhance rural livelihoods and environmentally-friendly land use.
The over 5,000 tree seedlings planting was the first of the long-term initiative phases to bring back the degraded forests held in conjunction with the launch event.
The event also marked the unveiling of the Livelihoods Programme which consists in the handing over of 10,000 pyrethrum splits, 5,000 tea seedlings, milk coolers, 50 beehives, and a last-mile electricity connectivity project that is expected to be of service to more than 3,500 households, among others.
According to President Ruto, the program beyond helping to restore the environment, also aims at creating various economic opportunities especially through community forestry, eco-tourism, and agroforestry. These initiatives, according to him, will pave the way for the harmonious co-existence of conservation and socio-economic development.
Environment specialists have welcomed the scheme to be an important step toward Kenya’s grand project of planting 15 billion trees by 2032 and restoring degraded ecosystems countrywide.
For years, the Mau Forest, whose area exceeds 400,000 hectares, has been stripped, encroached, and illegally logged, among other things, thereby threatening rivers and water sources that feed millions of livelihoods