A section of Kilifi County-based environmental activists now wants President William Ruto to shade more light on which trees and regions was the ban on logging lifted.
Speaking in Kidundu village after planting more than 10,000 mangrove seedlings, Gro With Us Africa managing director Kelly Banda, one of the environmentalists, said the move if not well elaborated would accelerate deforestation and that the effort put in place to conserve the environment will go to waste.
He said a big percentage of state forest cover along the coastline comprises indigenous mangrove trees which are hardwood, adding that their percentage is very minimal.
“We want the president and the Cabinet Secretary for environment, climate change and forest Soipan Tuya to come clear and tell us which types of trees and regions the ban lifted because we fear this kind of declaration will negate all the milestones we had made during the ban. A big chunk of forest cover along the coastline comprises of indigenous mangrove trees their coverage had not yet reached the 10 per cent forest cover as required by United Nations Environment Programme {UNEP},” said Banda.
Banda said the lifting of the ban is on the right track for the upper region where they depend on timber and forest products.
“On the upper regions, the move was made at the right time because softwood trees take a short duration to mature and they need to be harvested and economically the government needs to earn something from it. Wood is very expensive right now because we are importing but at least will have our wood from within so it’s going to be cheaper but for us at the coast region we are firmly opposed to this declaration,” he said.
Kilifi climate change governance platform {KCCGP} vice chair Elizabeth Wanjiku expressed concern that the move would jeopardize the country’s forest cover.
“The ideology of cutting matured trees is good but how can we relate with the government ambitions of planting 15 billion trees by 2032 as part of the efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change and restore the country’s forest cover,” she said.
She said if the ban was to be lifted, it should have gone through various consultations gradually and not in a blanket way.
“The decision will do more harm than good if not properly channelled,” she added.
Mtongani-Kidundu community group chairperson Stephen Chivatsi said during the Covid-19 pandemic so many mangrove trees were destroyed by the communities, insisting that there is a need for a restoration mechanism to be emplaced.
“What we are trying to do right now is to restore the destruction of mangroves that took place during the covid-19 pandemic. The gains that we have made so far have not yet reached 40 per cent so when you allow people to cut down trees it will retrogressively undermine the effort we’ve made,” said Chivatsi.
Chivatsi said since the partnership with the environmentalist stakeholders in the area they have managed to plant more than 1 million mangrove seedlings.
On June 2, the president announced that there is a need to open up economies of areas that depend on timber and forest products
The moratorium was placed in February 2018 during former president Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime to protect forest cover from illegal loggers.
