Environment Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya has urged Kenyans to embrace nurturing tree seedlings to maturity.
Speaking during a tree planting exercise in Narok West, the CS said Kenyans should not only plant trees and leave them to survive on their own but also nature them.
"I have been telling Kenyans, if you plant a tree please develop a plan of taking care of the tree. It is better to plant one tree that you can nurture to maturity than to plant thousands of trees that you plant and go," she said.
"You will not be doing anything, it will be a zero-sum game."
Tuya rallied Kenya's intensify tree growth as a climate change mitigation measure saying the phenomenon had become a matter of life and death.
"The issue of climate change is now a matter of life and death. We cannot continue planting trees as a pastime. We cannot continue planting trees just as a mere act of corporate social responsibility," she said.
The CS also recounted recent tree-growing success stories including last year's launch of the 15 billion tree-growing programme in Ngong Forest where the entire 560,000 seedlings planted were thriving because of good nurturing.
She said the tree planting activity at Soipan Primary School was part of lead-up activities for this year's World Environment Day.
The national celebration will be held on June 5 in Nakuru.
The CS thanked the various agencies that supported the initiative including KFS, Nema and Narok county government.
