Why we need to plant one billion trees today – Forestry PS Mugambi

What does it take to plant one billion trees in one day? That is the Ministry of Environment's lofty target today. It is possible, says Gitonga Mugambi, the Principal Secretary for Climate Change and Forestry in the Ministry of Environment. He spoke to Star's John Muchangi on plans for today's national tree-planting exercise.

What is the goal of this exercise, having only been announced this week?

The country led by His Excellency, Dr William Ruto, has set aside today for two things. One is to commemorate and remember the people we have lost due to floods. Also for us to have a conversation around tree planting. A few months back we had the severest drought for the last 40 years. And now here we are talking about people being carried away by floods. What a contrast! This is the manifestation of climate change.

As we remember the people we lost in floods, we need to minimise such risk in future through massive tree planting. Trees come with a lot of advantage in terms of climate control. Climate change is caused by global warming and trees are the easiest way to minimise if effects. Why? Because trees are able to clean the environment of carbon dioxide.

Also trees reduce runoff and soil erosion. When we have a canopy of trees, the force that this the rain comes and hits the ground the with will be minimised. More so, the trees will enable the water to sink to the aquifers in the ground. This means we have water for use during droughts.

In terms numbers, what would be the economic impact?

We were called upon by the President to plant 15 billion trees in ten years. To do the 15 billion trees, we need an investment of about Sh1.3 trillion. That's what we need to invest from now for the next 10 years to plant and grow the trees. If you take the direct value alone, one tree today costs between Sh5,000 to Sh10,000.

So the minimum value of those 15 billion trees comes to at least Sh75 trillion, and this is at the farm level. On the higher side, the value is at least Sh150 trillion. Look at the jobs that can be created through the industries that can be supported.

I don't see the sector where you can see make that within 10 years, unless we strike gold. Even petroleum cannot get us there. Today forestry supports about 3.6 per cent of the GDP. But we see a potential of forest supporting between 15 per cent and 30 per cent of GDP in this country.  

Everybody in this world now is also now talking about carbon sequestration. Africa contributes about 4 per cent of the carbon in the atmosphere, while the developed nations do the 96 per cent. So whereas we will be developing our wood-based industries, we also have that added advantage of us getting this carbon from the atmosphere and we get paid. 

What is the programme for the day?

Every Cabinet Secretary is assigned a specific site when they must go out and plant trees. Then they will be expected to move out to once per month to that site to make sure the trees grow.  We have also set sections around the county where people can go and plant trees. And we are telling people they need to buy seedlings. At Kenya Forest Service and Prisons nurseries a seedling is about ten shillings.  But in the private sector the price isn't controlled.

We also have KFS on the ground, NEMA and the Kenya Water Towers Agency advising people on the ABC of growing a tree.

What was the performance of this day in the last year?

Last year we recorded about 120 million trees through the Jaza Miti app. We would have recorded much more than that. It's only that many people did not post. But from that time, up to now, over 400 million trees have been grown. So we encourage people to post as much as possible.

What’s the target for today?

We are targeting one billion trees. We can get there if every adult plants a minimum 50 trees and a child at least 20 trees.

What is the status of our protected forests? Logging has been widespread in the past and could undermine this exercise.

There has been a lot of destruction of forests in the last 60 years. When this administration took power, we recognised this as a problem.

So the first thing was to recruit 2,700 Kenya Forest Service rangers, train them, and then deploy them accordingly. Another thing is instilling discipline in KFS. That's why you saw 50 officers from KFS sacked. We also created a hotline to report any illegality in forests. We used to receive about 10 to 15 calls per day and we acted on them together with the DCI.

Today, we receive about one call per week.

Does the existence of forests meant for commercial logging and national forests side by side fuel illegal logging and should not the two be separated?

Trees are grown so that they can be harvested at some point. There was a moratorium on harvesting in plantation forests for six years.  

According to the way our forests are set, we are supposed to be planting 5,000 acres of forest per year but also we are supposed to be harvesting 5,000 acres per year. The moratorium did a lot of damage because there was no harvesting in the plantations for six years, and no new trees were planted. It killed industries and rendered people jobless.

We said, we are going to lift it, then do tree harvesting in a sustainable and organised manner. Qualified people tendered, and were prequalified within the law. We are also ensuring all these places are planted. In this country, we have 2.6 million hectares of forest. Out of that we we only have 150,000 or five per cent under the plantations. The rest, 95 per cent, is indigenous forests which are never harvested.

What is the sustainability of the campaign?

We do constant follow up because one day is not sufficient. Every Cabinet Minister must be out once per month to visit where you planted and take care of the trees you planted.

This means it is an exercise that will continue throughout. When we are starting of course, there's a wait and see attitude, but we are seeing more and more institutions signing up for the exercise.