President William Ruto has said his administration will not allow people to graze or cultivate crops in forests.
Speaking in Chepseon market in Kericho, the President said the practice is likely to lead to the destruction of forests.
“You have heard about climate change. Kenya was almost destroyed by adverse weather conditions just the other year and it was because of environmental degradation,” he said.
He said the Kenya Kwanza administration will not allow continued destruction of the environment.
“We must be careful or else we will be in problems,” he added.
Residents of the area had pleaded with the President to allow them to graze their animals in the forests.
“You want to graze in the forest. What do you want to go to do in forests? I am told those who go to graze in the forest carry an axe along,” Ruto said.
The President wondered why people graze in the forests with axes.
“I am told that when the cows are grazing, you are busy cutting down trees. We will not allow that to happen,” he said.
The issue of farming within forests is a sensitive topic in Kenya.
Kenyans have periodically farmed in forests in a system popularly known as the Shamba System.
The Shamba System refers to a government arrangement to allow local communities to produce food on forest land for free.
In return, the people plant and look after trees until they are mature enough to be harvested for timber. The system does not apply to indigenous forests, only to planted ones.
The system was started in 1910 by the British colonial administration to supply wood for industrial and domestic use in Kenya and to ease pressure on natural forests.
By 1979, 160,000 hectares of plantation forest had been established, according to the Kenya Forest Research Institute (KEFRI).
But years of misuse and people destroying the planted forests led to the system being banned and reintroduced on multiple occasions.
The government tried to reintroduce the shamba system in 2007 under a new name – the Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS).
In January 2021, former President Uhuru Kenyatta outlawed PELIS, citing environmental degradation due to unsustainable tree felling, three years after imposing a moratorium on logging in public and in community forests over the same concerns.