Re-Growing Kenya's Forests | Giving Nature A Voice | Free Documentary Nature

A lot of tree planting is being done in this country, but there's been no tree growing. There's a lot of publicity made out of, oh, we're going to plant 100,000 trees or a million trees or five million trees. We shouldn't really be thinking about that. We should be thinking about, I'm going to plant 100 hectares, and I'm going to make a forest. Come on, puppies. This way. Come on, puppies. Oh, yes. Look at here. My dad introduced us based in Uganda, and he was managing a 5,000 hectare plantation for a German guy. Then he introduced me to Kenya, and Kenya was already doing, he had an indigenous tree seeding nursery and all his eucalyptus plantation. We came up to Soysambu one weekend, and Tom Chumley said, have some land, plant some trees. So that was the sort of genesis of African Forest and us being in this beautiful place today. I'm Helen Thornton-Mutiso. I'm a director and shareholder, non-executive director and shareholder of African Forest. My name is Kenya Mutiso, and I am also a director at African Forest. African Forest is a holistic agroforestry company. We were established in 2006, April. We have a 20-year license to occupy 126 acres on Soysambu estate, where we have an indigenous tree seeding nursery. There's a very good friend of mine. He used to tell me there's loads of money in trees. This is when I was in the property business, and I used to look at him a lot. One day, just when the whole buzz came out about these eucalyptus trees from South Africa that grew in five years, I had access to about six acres of land that I didn't need to buy and purchase. So I persuaded the owner, can I plant some of these trees? So I planted them. Yeah, they grew. When the trees grew, I could see there's money that can be made here. It also, there's just something about watching something you plant grow and become something that's worth something. This is where the plant positive came from. By observing how the trees grew in the beds, the trees that are in the middle grow much faster because they only receive the sunshine when the sunshine is overhead. The trees on the side, they get sunshine in the morning. The trees on this side get sunshine in the evening. So the ones in the middle are the ones that don't get sunshine, so they grow much faster. So this is in fact what started our idea of plant positive. And then we decided now to mix the different species, so you get different trees putting in different nutrients, taking out different nutrients, so you get better growth rates. If you just allow a piece of land to stay, to be fenced off and no livestock going on there, that natural regeneration process will happen. But to get to a closed canopy forest, you're talking about 50 years. What we looked at was how do we emulate that and create those same conditions of a biodiverse forest with pioneer species and climax species in it to create two things. Firstly, revenue generation and profit from that land. And secondly, rapid regeneration of indigenous forest. A forest is meant to be X number of trees per hectare at X height with X canopy cover. There are many different ways people, organisations, that World Agroforestry, they have their definition. FAO have their own definition. Kenya government have their own definition. We would define forest as at least 70% canopy cover and trees at least three to four metres tall minimum. We would like to help towards a 10% forest cover by 2030. There's a lot of tree planting that happens in this country, which is very, very good. The corporate world has been excellent, you know, Safaricom, Kenya, KCB, Equity, Green Belt Movement. They have planted millions of trees, but how many have been grown in that thing? There's a lot of tree planting that occurs, but there's no, you know, you can't just go and plant trees and leave them. It's like when you plant your cabbages and you weed it and, you know, give it, give nurture it for some time to grow it to a certain stage where it can fend for itself. So yes, I think we should start growing trees. We should grow trees, not plant them for start. In a lot of tree planting, the survival rate is less than five to 10%. So if someone plants a million trees, you've only got 50 to 100,000 left after even as little as a year. We shouldn't really be thinking about that. We should be thinking about I'm going to plant 100 hectares and I'm going to make a forest instead of all this sort of publicity on we're planting a million trees or two million trees, which is just not productive. It's actually better to plant 100,000 trees and see them all survive and get a forest than to plant a million trees. Former Minister, late Minister of Environment, the Honorable Mishuki, 2011 or 12, okay, at that point he said we need seven billion trees to be planted and grown. The total eco-challenge every year for the last 15 years or something, them and their partners have been planting up to 100 million trees a year. But these 100 million trees are trees that are planted for, they're not, they're not defining, it's exotics and so you're talking about they're in partnership with the big tea factories that are planting huge acreage of land for their boilers, okay. So if those guys are doing 100 million, I think the government is doing another maybe 100 million, maybe 150, I'm not sure. Back in 2012 that would have to have been doing 500 million. So even up to now we're still doing half. We don't even have capacity to produce the balance, there's not enough seed. The government currently produces around five to ten tons of seed a year, our seed centre should be producing five to seven tons within five years, that's giving you maybe a maximum of 15 tons. In order to plant half a billion trees a year or 500 million you need about 50 tons of seed. That's the first starting point. Then you need the tree nurseries. To plant that number of trees you need to plant about 11 million seedlings per county per year, which is going to take anywhere from two to three thousand hectares of land per county per year. You need to have people trained to maintain, to plant and maintain those trees. All they require is constant care, so like until they establish themselves you want to make sure you give them water at least once every two days. Here in Kenya the only land left to plant forestry, high potential land, is occupied by people. To achieve our 10% forest cover that the government wants we need to actually plant a lot of this forest on private own land and in small parcels. So when everybody is 50 by 80, they've got 10% of it is trees, I'm sure it'll look pretty, it'll look, it'll be nice, I think that would be a good achievement. So before you start planting anything you've actually got to go and do some surveys and make a plan with the community, you know, a lot of things in this whole, some guys sitting in some office in Europe or even here in Nairobi says, this is what we think these people need and they go and they try to implement and I don't think it works. Forest covers an area of 8,715.3 hectares. The community here and the population is quite high and it is exerting a lot of pressure inside this forest. Because we have a lot of exploitation, people extracting bamboo for building, for fencing their farms and most recently an influx of livestock. The animals came to Greece because of the grass? Because of the grass. But you still allow the cattle to come in here to Greece, especially in this time of drought? In the circumstances, but in normal circumstances we don't, we don't allow. All the communities around in this area were designed for this forest, for water, for livestock and other upkeep, firewood and all that. How long have you been planting? Almost five years. I plant because I have a lot of help, to build, to feed my son. Okay. If we had planted a lot of trees, me and the others, we wouldn't be here today. Financially, you can gain from tree planting in a number of ways. Production in Kenya at the moment is just of direct harvesting. If you actually now start processing them, you can increase your profit margins quite dramatically. The importance of the grass is that it helps the environment. And the environment is clean. Because if there was grass when the drought came, it would be a mess. It can't be destroyed. And it helps the environment. And also, it helps the cows. Because if you take care of the cows, it helps. Two kilos and a half. Now you go to Helen and she goes to Papel. Financially, you can gain from tree planting in a number of ways. If you're planting in our Planet Positive model, you're harvesting 1,600 trees a hectare in year 4-5 and 1,600 in year 10-12. You've then got the stumps to dig up to make charcoal. This is our charcoal kiln. It's called, as you can see from the shape, it's called a beehive kiln. So basically what happens, you see there's an open door here and an open door on the other side. So the entire kiln is filled with wood, packed as close together as possible to reduce the amount of air and therefore oxygen. You're not getting oxygen getting in. As soon as oxygen's getting into something burning, it will eventually burn to ash. But with this, because you're stopping the air from getting in at a certain critical period, you actually get full charcoalisation occurring on the kiln. You've got all the non-timber forest products from the trees. Anything that come from the forest that are not timber. So they're not timber, they're not charcoal, they're not firewood. It can involve anything from the fruit, the leaves, the bark or the inner bark, gums, tannins, dyes, soaps. So all of these things can be made into products. So some finished products. We've got wild apricot forest jam that comes from the Dovialis abyssinica. Then we have forest chutney. Then you have medicines. So this, for example, is prunus africana. This comes from the leaf of the prunus tree. It's a vascular dilator, so it dilates the blood vessels, allowing the blood to carry more oxygen to all the cells, keeping the cells healthy. And in dilating the blood vessels, it also lowers high blood pressure. The profit margins on non-timber forest products really depend... A lot of the production in Kenya at the moment is just of direct harvesting and selling. So, for example, a lot of the gum Arabic, frankincense, things like that, they're sold raw onto China or to Korea or other places. Now, if you actually now start processing them, you can increase your profit margins quite dramatically. Vijana is an initiative. It's an initiative that was... It came to us through some vijana. We have an intern, his name is Simon, and he was like, how can we help the young generation in this country to appreciate trees and also to... There's a lot of job creation that can be done out of this tree business. So how can we work with the vijana? To reach Kenya's vision 2030, we need to plant, like, 200 million trees each year, each year, each year, each year. We approached African Forest with the idea that during this campaign and electioneering period, we need to plant trees, at least each voter to plant one tree. Shambhala is one of the most important communities in Kenya. I believe there's no time wasted in planting a tree. I'd encourage people to plant trees. For me, this initiative is very important because it lasts till the next generation. Like somebody said, we loan the earth from our children. They're the owners, so we need to take care of the earth and this will come next time and take over. We came to understand African Forest as a model where they encourage planting both indigenous and exotic trees. So I believe they have a big role to play. In the effort of planting trees, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Dig a hole and plant a tree. All of us have some land somewhere. You don't need to plant money. You can plant 10 a year, so at least somebody can look after them for you. If you work in the city and you have a piece of land there at your grandpa's place, all Kenyans have ancestral land. If it's the case where you don't have land, then you can get involved with local schools, you can get involved with local community groups. There's a lot of tree planting initiatives, there's a lot of tree planting that needs to be done in forests. If you're a Kenyan without your own land, then I would certainly encourage you to get involved with other organisations which do have land and assist them. If each Kenyan just plants one tree, one tree each year, we would be planting about 40 million trees each year, each year, each year. I love the soil. I get my medicine from the soil. I love the soil because it gives us food. I love the soil because it gives us good water.