Kenya’s ambitious goal to restore and conserve 10.6 million hectares of degraded landscapes and ecosystems has been boosted as stakeholders gathered to discuss way forward.
On the second day of the Kenya Landscape Restoration Forum on Friday, government and stakeholders discussed ways of shaping the restoration strategy.
The representatives from across Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Costa Rica shared the best models of landscape restoration and financing mechanisms.
Senior Environmental Specialist and lead at World Bank Ruth Tiffer said the forum was to enable stakeholders to share forest landscape restoration investments ongoing in the country.
“Our objective was to bring together the different stakeholders to share the work that we have been doing under AREECA and shared Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) investments on going in the country. We also brought lessons learned from other FLR projects in other countries to support the government in the preparation of the National Landscape Strategy understanding in FLR investments,” she said.
The World Bank team shared the findings of a preliminary study on the cost benefit analysis of different business models for sustainable forest landscape restoration interventions in selected areas of Makueni, Taita-Taveta and Kwale.
They provided information about the degradation affecting the areas and the importance of targeting landscape restoration.
Some of the challenges noted included increased land degradation and human-wildlife conflict worsened by climate change.
The team from WWF, which co-convened the forum, shared insights on large-scale restoration based on experiences implementing landscape restoration with local communities in Amboseli-Tsavo sub-landscapes.
Officer Africa Projects World Wild Fund-Germany Johannes Kirchgatter said this is a unique chance for a truly participatory planning process to jointly restore the fantastic ecosystems of Kenya in a holistic way.
"Addressing not only the precious water towers but also often neglected ecosystems such as savannahs, rangelands and wetlands is crucial to secure livelihoods, ecosystem functions like water flow and the unique wildlife of Kenya," he said.
Manager Southern Kenya Landscape Programme, WWF-Kenya Martin Mulama pointed out that large-scale restoration approaches in Amboseli have provided best models for replication in other landscapes across the country
"These interventions have led to successful restoration of expansive landscapes, including rangelands and farmlands, and contributed to increased involvement of local communities and improvement of livelihoods," Mulama said.
The National Government seeks to achieve the 10.6 million hectares target through the 15 Billion Trees initiative.
Their goal is also to achieve 30 per cent forest cover for Kenya by 2032 for biodiversity conservation, environmental sustainability, sustainable livelihoods, climate resilience and social-economic development.
The forum was organized by the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change and Forestry, World Bank and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) under the AREECA Program and Local partners Tsavo Foundation and the Conservation Alliance of Kenya (CAK).
