Community Forest Associations play an important role in safeguarding the forests, says a leading member of the organisations.
Daniel Gathiru, project assistant at the National Alliance of Community Forest Associations (Nacofa), says Kenyans are used to event-planting of trees and when everyone has left, there is no one to nurture those trees.
“More often, we do not designate people responsible for taking care of the seedlings in the forest. After a few months, you only have less than 40 per cent of trees that have matured,” Gathiru says.
“As we gear towards the target of 15 billion trees in 10 years, we need to bring on board the experience and knowledge that CFAs have and use them to maintain the seedlings once they have been planted.”
He says in each forest, there is a community living adjacent to it. The Forest Act 2005 brought on board communities living adjacent to the forest to participate in forest conservation, and the Act requires them to form associations.
CFAs are governed by the Act, which helps them to partner with KFS in the conservation of forests. They are also governed by the Participatory Forest Management Plan, which enables KFS stations countrywide to come up with an agreement and partner with communities living adjacent to forests in conservation.
Gathiru says last year, Nacofa received funding from the Worldwide Fund for Nature-Kenya to implement a project called Voices for Just Climate Action (VCA).
It aimed to amplify the voices of marginalised communities for climate action.
“We targeted Nakuru county and brought together 12 CFAs drawn from various forest stations in the county. The reason was to form a network so that they can amplify their voices together,” Gathiru says.
He says this mobilisation enhances communities’ voices and increases their strength for climate justice.
“We shared with the 12 CFAs our intention of forming a network and they agreed to the idea,” Gathiru says.
“They acknowledged that it is important for them to come and work together in addressing their challenges. Each forest station nominated members and currently, we have a network in Nakuru county called the Nakuru Community Forest Association Network.”
He says they have also linked the network with relevant stakeholders.
“Previously, it was difficult for an individual CFA to have a courtesy call with a partner, but it is easy for them to approach as a network. Their issues have started getting attention from various stakeholders and the county is now beginning to listen to them,” he says.
The project assistant says Nacofa will come up with memorandums that will be used to guide the network, while connecting them to various partners to help in achieving their goals.
Gathiru says Nacofa has also been involved in policy formulation and is currently pushing through the Cost and Benefit Sharing Bill at the Senate.
“The Bill looks at how revenues of natural resources trickle down to the communities,” he says.
“It is all about sharing resources. We are building the capacity and trying to ensure that when it goes to Parliament, it is passed into law.”
The story was produced with support from WWF-K VCA project and Mesha