Kenya - Environment
Risk of increasing deforestation in Kenya

afrol.com, 28 February - Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said on 27 February that he was concerned about the risk of increasing deforestation in Kenya. He was responding to media reports that some 68,000 hectares of remaining indigenous forests, including those in part of the Mount Kenya forest reserve, may be cleared to settle landless people.

- Forests are the earth's green lungs, helping to remove carbon dioxide
and other pollutants from the atmosphere, he said. "They also stabilize soils, reducing the risks of erosion and run off into rivers, and are in many cases home to a rich variety of wildlife and indigenous, forests dwelling, peoples. Forests also provide food, shelter and medicines and are a rich source of therapeutic compounds from which companies can derive new, potential, cures for diseases from Aids to cancer," Toepfer contiuned.

- In recent years the rate of global deforestation has been running at three to four per cent of the earth's forest cover. This is an alarming rate and it must be stopped. The short term economic gains of clearing woodlands for timber or agriculture must be matched against the even bigger, long term, losses as a result of uncontrolled and unsustainable deforestation, he said.

Bai-Mass Taal, Senior Programme Officer in UNEP's Division of Policy, Development and Law, said: "The world has been aware of the issue of deforestation since the early 1980s. Several attempts have been made by the world community to address and arrest this serious, environmental, problem".

Initiatives include the Tropical Forest Action Plan, which grew out of the World Forestry Congress in Mexico in 1985; the adoption by nations at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 of Forestry Principles; the
Intergovernmental Panel on Forests (IPF), set up in 1995; the Inter Governmental Forum on Forests (IFF) and more recently, the United Nations Forum on Forests, established last summer in New York.

UNEP has also been working with regional organizations, such as the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment, to try and help countries manage their forests sustainably. Despite these high-level initiatives, millions of hectares of forest continue to be cleared annually.

Mr Taal said if the root causes were not addressed, the alarming loss of forests was likely to continue.

In many developing countries these underlying causes include poverty and booming populations which forces farmers to clear trees for food. Many developing nations also have high levels of debt which are forcing them to fell trees for export to earn foreign currency.

UNEP also believes that real political commitment on forests across the globe is urgently needed so that countries can implement the around 150 proposals for conserving and managing which have been made by the IPF/IFF.

Certification schemes, such as the Forest Stewardship Scheme pioneered by groups like the World Wide Fund for Nature and which guarantee that timber has come from an environmentally friendly source, also need to be extended.

The United Nations Forum on Forests will revisit the issue of a legally binding forests agreement in 2005 where there may be another attempt to reach consensus on a legally binding forests convention. 

Source: UNEP

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