KENDO: CBC can spread passion for trees

It's patriotic to set targets, like growing 15 billion trees to raise national forest cover by 30 per cent by the year 2032. The challenge invites everyone to plant 300 trees during the decade. This translates to 30 trees per year.

The targets are manageable, but excuses abound: Goats and other domestic animals are blamed for destroying tree saplings. Scapegoaters are keen to tend to their maize, potato or sugarcane farms. Goats don't destroy their maize for the 100 days they wait for the harvest.

Unpredictable weather patterns, perennial droughts and pests are also blamed for poor tree husbandry. Malicious neighbours have always been accused of cutting borderline trees for firewood or burning charcoal.

Trees are neglected because most people don't appreciate their value. The environmental value of greenery, like absorbing or sinking polluting carbon dioxide, is an academic abstraction. It's only now that the link between climate change and the desecration of the environment is being appreciated.

The challenge is the patience needed to nurse trees to maturity. Trees are clever. They don't grow because they have been planted for the cameras. Trees, like children getting into baby class, nursery, pre-unit, primary, junior secondary, secondary and college, need care.

Jean Giono of 'The Man who Planted Trees' fame knew this centuries before the advent of climate change. 'L'homme qui plantait des arbres' is an allegory of a shepherd who reforested a desolate valley around the Alps in Provence, southern France, during the first half of the 20th century.

In 2018, residents of a gated community off Nairobi's Ngong Road, planted 2,000 tree seedlings along the drive, snaking through the hill, overlooking the National Defence College, Karen.

The residents had hoped, by now, their estate road would boast assorted trees, adding ambience to the neighbourhood. The residents had an artistic impression of what the neighbourhood would look like five years later.

Five years later, only six sickly trees, some crooked and cracked, can be counted along the four-kilometre stretch. The survivors are crying for protection.

The seedlings were planted a week after the end of the 'long' rainy season. There was no nursing plan for the saplings.

The 'Mission15B#JazaMiti' launched last month in Ngong Hills Forest is a reminder of similar initiatives of the 1980s. President Moi, wearing short-sleeved khaki shirts, would be seen lifting boulders to build gabions.

Moi would also preside over annual national tree-planting occasions. The idea was to raise forest cover and control soil erosion.  

When Moi retired 24 years later, the national forest cover had fallen below five per cent, from 30 per cent in 1960. National indifference to the environment explains the paradox.

The National Forest Resources Assessment report shows the national tree cover stands at 12 per cent, while forest cover is 8.83 per cent, up from 5.9 per cent in 2018.

Moi, arguably, was ahead of his time, even as some of his actions contradicted his ceremonial intentions. The Kanu regime's fights with Green Belt Movement founder Wangari Maathai over the sanctity of Uhuru Park and Karura Forest are memorable contradictions.

Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her practical actions to restore the environment and biodiversity.

It's possible to relive the Nobel laureate's passion for the environment, through the school system. The yet-to-be-defined competency-based curriculum offers the entry point for climate change education.

Catching them young means targeting schools with Climate Change Clubs. This can be built into the co-curricular activities of schools, complete with competitions and prizes for better outcomes.

This can escalate environmental awareness and nature-friendly actions to individuals, families and communities.