Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has said the government will not relent on implementing actions aimed at countering the harsh consequences of climate change.
In a statement on Friday, the Prime CS said Kenya is facing the severest drought in 40 years due to failure to act and as such, the best way to mitigate against the consequences was greening.
"We have set a target of planting 15 billion trees to achieve a 30 per cent tree cover by 2032. This ambitious target translates to 1.5 billion trees every year. It is doable," he said.
"It is no accident that the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry was created."
He said though the country appeared to have met the constitutional 10 per cent forest cover, the country should do better than that.
"The Kenya Forest Services (KFS) tells us that the 10 per cent was achieved after planting over 1.8 billion trees in a span of three years (2019-2022). Moreover, a total of 48 billion Kenyan shillings was needed for this noble cause," he said.
The Prime CS said the tree cover stands at 12.13 per cent out of the target of 30 per cent by 2032.
He said to achieve the ambitious target, every Kenyan is encouraged to plant trees wherever they are in Kenya.
"This is why I recently called on the 57,212,380 million Kenyans (as at May 2023) to plant a tree on Madaraka Day. If they have heeded my call, we should by yesterday have added about 60 million trees towards the 15 billion target," Mudavadi said.
