Going green with REDD

To combat the effects of climate change by reducing carbon emissions, the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation or simply REDD, has come up with a programme to compensate countries geared towards the process.

REDD is expected to spur a massive flow of funds to tropical countries, help preserve rainforests and deliver economic benefits to impoverished rural communities.

It is is already in place in Kenya and Brazil.

In Kenya, the Wildlife Works has initiated the Wildlife Works Carbon at Rukinga Ranch in Taita district of the Coast Province, situated in the dry arid scrubland between Tsavo East and West in southeast Kenya.

It is a vibrant ecosystem, home to elephants, lions and fifty other species of large mammals besides the bird and plant life.

The ranch has an organic greenhouse to provide local farmers with cash-generating citrus trees and free agro-forestry trees to use for building and fuelwood.

Since the land is not conducive for agriculture, the local population sees the dryland forest as a source of fuelwood and charcoal and where applicable clear it for habitation or subsistence agriculture.

This is a problem repeated throughout the continent.

In Kenya’s Rift Valley Province, the country’s largest catchment area, the Mau Forest, is under threat from human habitation and illegal loggers. In the Democratic Republic Congo of Congo, traditionally forests have been seen as “valueless” and hence their unabated plundering.

Forests have largely been ignored in national development strategies and their wanton destruction has had far reaching consequences such as the drying up of major rivers and the consequent effect of low water levels in dams for power generation such as the recent closure of the Masinga Dam in Eastern Kenya; loss of biodiversity and livelihoods leading to more poverty, soil erosion, drought, other climate change effects and emissions of greenhouse gases leading to global warming.

In February, Wildlife Works Carbon in collaboration with the Kenya Forest Service, announced East Africa’s first carbon offset projects to take advantage of the emerging global carbon markets covering REDD. The Kenya Forest Service is the national focal point for REDD projects.

Alfred Gichu, the chief forest officer said that the forest service intends to forge strong partnerships with the private sector.

“We welcome the entrance of Wildlife Works Carbon into the market, to assist us and Kenya’s rural landowners in managing the technical complexity of the global carbon market, to engage the global carbon offset buyer in our efforts to protect our wilderness heritage and to contribute to global efforts in climate change mitigation.”

Already, a group in the Amazon has signed up for the new venture.

In the Amazon Forest, which covers 1.57 million square kilometres of rainforest, the local community who are members of the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve Project, the Amazon’s first independently validated project under REDD, are being rewarded for protecting their forests and reducing carbon emissions in the process.