State signals return to shamba system to improve forest cover

A section of Kabaru forest that has been converted into a farmland in Kieni constituency, Nyeri County. [Mose Sammy, Standard]

Communities living around forests will be allowed to cultivate in the ecosystem in a move likely to anger environmentalists and conservationists who have been against the shamba system.

The shamba system also known as Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (Pelis), which had been banned for two decades, involves farmers tending to trees in state-owned forests in return for being allowed to grow subsistence crops.