Kenya has asked private firms and donors to fund its ambitious 15 billion trees campaign.
The ambitious target should be achieved by 2032 at an estimated Sh600 billion in 10 years.
On Monday, Environment Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya asked donors and private firms to invest in the initiative.
The CS said the initiative is meant to restore 10.6 million hectares of degraded landscapes and ecosystems and achieve 30 per cent tree cover by 2032.
The move, Tuya said, will contribute to biodiversity conservation, environmental sustainability, sustainable livelihoods, climate resilience and socioeconomic development.
“It will also enable Kenya to realise 50 per cent greenhouse gases reduction from the forest sector, as part of the country’s NDC target of lowering national GHGs emissions by 32 per cent by 2030 and achieve the land degradation neutrality by 2030 under the UNCCD among others,” she said.
Tuya said the National Landscape and Ecosystem Restoration Programme: Towards Growing 15 billion Trees still has a huge funding gap “that calls for collective action and strategic partnerships to attract resources from across the globe”.
“It is the reason we have embarked on this journey of unlocking finance, partnerships, and synergy for landscape and ecosystem restoration in Africa with a focus on Kenya," she said.
"We seek to explore and implement innovative financial mechanisms that attract public and private capital towards projects aimed at restoring and conserving our landscapes and ecosystems.”
The CS said her ministry seeks to scale up of existing innovative financing mechanisms such as Payment for Ecosystem Services, Results-Based Financing, Green and Blue Bonds, Debt for Nature Swaps, among others, for where and when they are applicable.
Climate Change Principal Secretary Festus Ngeno said Kenya’s landscapes and ecosystems are increasingly under threats of degradation.
“This brings with it the consequent threat to societal livelihoods, increased poverty index, loss of biodiversity and decreased resilience to impacts of climate change, among others,” the PS said, adding that the the cost of landscape and ecosystem degradation in Kenya has been estimated at $1.3 Billion annually.
“There is therefore need to accelerate approaches to address the key drivers of degradation in each ecosystem with a view to preventing, halting and reversing degradation.”
