Trees,
Plans to establish a comprehensive registry for the Nyeri County carbon credit programme are at an advanced stage, Water, Irrigation, Environment and Climate Change Executive, Fredrick Kinyua has revealed.
The initiative, spearheaded by the county government in partnership with the Upper Tana-Nairobi Water Trust (UTNWF) and Mount Kenya Trust, aims to exploit the county’s abundant tree cover and forest cover to generate income once the necessary funds are secured.
According to Kinyua, the county is also hoping to use the registry to tap funds to facilitate conservation and rehabilitation initiatives in the county. The CECM said that once in place the registry will ensure local farmers who have contributed to global efforts to combat climate change are compensated for their conservation efforts.
“Apart from building resilience in the Tana Water and the Ewaso Nyiro catchment areas, we are working with the UTNWT, the Mt Kenya West Ewaso Trust, the Flora and Fauna in partnership with the farmers to package issues of carbon credits by developing a registry. We are hoping to position ourselves strategically to eventually trade these credits on the credit market,” said Kinyua.
The county executive was speaking on the sidelines of World Environment Day celebrations at the Wambugu Farm on Wednesday. The day which is marked on June 5 of every year, shines a spotlight on pressing environmental challenges affecting the globe.
This year’s campaign focused on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience under the slogan “Our land. Our future. We are Generation Restoration.” To mark the day, a total of 200 trees were planted at Gangarithi Primary school. Kinyua said that in line with this year’s theme of promoting drought resilience, the county was realigning its tree planting goals to ensure restoration initiatives also promote social economic interests.
He noted that despite boasting the largest tree and forest cover of 45 percent forest cover and 45.1 percent respectively, the county was losing out on short-term benefits of investing in fruit trees.
“We have concentrated so much on planting exotic trees, some of which have negative effects on the environment like the eucalyptus trees. The thing is that we need to re-look at the type of trees that we are planting. That is why we are encouraging the introduction of new value chains like avocado and macadamia and other medicinal trees so that our farmers also benefit from the new revenue stream,” said Kinyua.
