Climate Change Mitigation thru Land & Forest Restoration in Kenya

Land degradation is a severe problem in Kenya. Unsustainable land use puts many of the country’s ecosystems, including its primary forests, under unprecedented stress.

An example of harmful and unsustainable land use causing desertification in Kenya is the deforestation of the country’s tropical forests. Simon Onywere, a professor of Environmental Planning and Management at Kenyatta University, points to Mount Kenya and three other tropical forests—Aberdares, Mau Forest complex, and Cherangany forest—ravaged by deforestation. He says deforestation is drying up the rivers because these mountains are where they get water.

Even the Aberdares, a a forest reserve stretching over 1000 square kilometres and one of the country’s major water catchment areas, is threatened by deforestation and degradation driven mainly by small-scale agriculture encroachments. Despite the boundary set in the Aberdare, where farming and settlement should stop, this does not prevent settlement and clearing. The result is a fragmented forest that disrupts the species’ habitats.

Data from the African Development Bank shows that between 1980 and 2000, Kenya lost nearly half or around 300,000 hectares of its forest cover due to intensive logging, charcoal production, and large-scale bush clearance for tea plantations.

Deforestation persisted in the subsequent years, with approximately 2,850 square kilometres of tree cover lost between 2000 and 2020, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The data suggests that 80% of this loss happened in primary humid forests, like the Mau, Mount Kenya, Aberdare, etc.

According to the Disaster Risk Reduction Association of Journalists, there is evidence that increased deforestation, and degradation of various ecosystems in Kenya are major drivers of extreme weather conditions and also cause poverty and loss of livelihoods for the communities there. 

Kenya loses approximately 54 square kilometres of forest every year. According to Dr Magero, a senior analyst at Development Initiatives specialising in global poverty and inequality trends, if this alarming trend continues over the next two to three decades, it could lead to disastrous consequences for the country.

Dr Magero has diligently monitored the data concerning forest loss and household income trends in Kenya. In addition to deforestation, unsustainable land use practices such as overstocking cattle and overgrazing exacerbate the issue, leaving the land barren and impeding vegetation regeneration during rainfall. Consequently, this practice contributes to drier conditions and the onset of desertification.

However, Professor Onywere thinks there is still hope to reverse this trend by applying better land use management and creating awareness at the community and household levels on how their actions contribute to the worsening impacts of extreme events and poverty. Governments also have a crucial role in setting clear usage of the land when they allocate it and ensuring that every home has some vegetation cover.

Extreme weather events in Kenya

In 2023, Kenya was plagued by droughts; the following year, the country was swamped by heavy rains.

From March to May 2024, Kenya was hit by heavy downpours, causing severe losses. Nearly 300 people were killed, and more than 160 were missing. Flash floods displaced over 50,000 households and destroyed thousands of acres of crops. The months from March until May are usually when the rain comes to the country, so residents expected this to happen; however, the residents observed that this year’s rainy season was unusual. Rainfall was nonstop and lingered until May.

The impacts of land degradation and desertification in Africa, estimated at 65% of its agricultural land, led African countries to begin a restoration effort through the AFR100 Initiative, which aims to restore 100 million hectares of land and reverse the degradation trend, resulting in increased poverty.

TerraFund is a programme that provides the finance and capacity for the AFR100 project to scale the restoration of degraded land and forest in Africa. Its new initiative, TerraFund for AFR100 Landscapes Cohort, invests USD$17.8 million to restore three critical African landscapes: Kenya’s Greater Rift Valley, the Lake Kivu & Rusizi River Basin of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda, and the Ghana Cocoa Belt.

The initiative invites Africa’s restoration champions to apply for funding and grow millions of trees. Out of the 600 organisations that responded, 92 were picked, and their activities and their impacts will be monitored over the next six years.

Anthony Muchiri and Phylis David Kiveli are two restoration champions funded by TerraFund to restore Ken’a’s Greater Rift Valley.

Phylis is a Makueni County farmer and a member of Ahadi Achievers Empowerment CBO (AAE), an organisation restoring degraded landscapes in the Greater Rift Valley. The heavy downpours from March to April this year damaged Phylis’s farm and swept away her two cows.

Anthony Muchiri is the executive director of Development Response-Kenya (DREK), a youth-led organisation that plants trees on farms in Kenya’s Garissa County, a practice known as agroforestry. DREK’s main nursery has also suffered damage from the floods caused by heavy rains. Eighty thousand saplings were lost when a river burst its banks, submerging nearby farms for several weeks.

Both Muchiri and Kiveli refuse to remain victims of the extreme events that damaged their livelihoods. Instead, they want to lead in restoring the Greater Rift Valley’s denuded landscapes to help communities build resilience against shocks like floods, droughts and other escalating disasters.

Community-led restoration achieves long-term success

A 2016 research study shows that locally led restoration projects are more likely to succeed up to 20 times than government—or international NGO-led initiatives. The study finds that securing the land rights of the Indigenous people living in the Amazon forest, who rely on the natural environment and forest for their livelihood, food, and income, can slow down deforestation and could benefit the climate by avoiding GHG emissions.

Similarly, in Kenya, when restoration champions like Kiveli and Muchiri lead the restoration of their land and spur community involvement, there is a greater chance for long-term success and increased awareness of how to become good stewards of their land. Better land use management and restoring forests will boost their resilience against climate change and extreme events and ensure that the land will sustainably provide them with livelihoods and income for many generations.

The fight against land degradation in Kenya is not just about planting trees—it’s about empowering communities to reclaim their land and their future.

As local leaders spearhead restoration efforts, they offer hope for a resilient Kenya where forests thrive, and livelihoods are secured for generations to come. Will their efforts be enough to reverse the damage?