Firms unite to save rare national park

By Fredrick Obura

As the world prepares to mark Global Environment Day in Rwanda today, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) and Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) are calling on local organisations to consider tree planting as a major part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

Through a movement dubbed Nairobi Greenline, the KAM and KWS hope the initiative would help to check escalating cases of global warming that has resulted into change of weather patterns worldwide.

The Sh35 million project aims at planting about 250,000 trees from the cheetah gate in Athi River to the Carnivore restaurant. The project aims at protecting the Nairobi National Park from pollution, encroachment and human/wildlife conflict. In recent years, the once tranquil Nairobi National Park has experienced an increasing human encroachment as the city continues to expand as a result of high migration from other parts of the country.

Its proximity to the capital city has exposed the park and its rich ecosystem to massive environmental risks.

The park faces dangers from land grabbing activities by politically connected individuals and developers, human settlement that continues to nibble away at the edges of the park to effluent discharge into streams and water sources. Other challenges include industrial pollution, human-wildlife conflict through poaching and grazing, plastic litter and solid waste scattered throughout the park.

These activities, if not mitigated in time, will reduce the country’s gain of having a national park situated just a few kilometres away from the city’s Central Business District (CBD).

"Green" is now a catch phrase and environmental movements and organisations have started projects like the Nairobi Greenline to help reduce carbon emitted to the atmosphere

The call by KWS and KAM for environmental conservation through a tree planting exercise comes at a time when organisations like Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), which has branches spread across the East African region, are allocating millions of shillings in tree planting exercise as part of their CSR initiative. KCB Chief Executive Martin Oduor-Otieno said the bank is keen to support global reforestation programme to beef up the planet vegetation cover.

The bank is investing Sh10.4 million to support environmental conservation activities through the KCB Foundation. Mr Oduor-Otieno said a huge amount of CSR funding goes towards environmental conservation because it is a key priority focus in community support programmes. He said protecting the environment ensures a better life for all citizens and leaves a lasting heritage for future generations.

He said KCB Group Foundation had earlier in the year had a joint tree planting exercise with Egerton University in which 20,000 indigenous seedlings were planted.

"We are discussing a partnership with United Nations Environment Programme and the Kenya Armed Forces to plant more trees at Kenya’s water catchments areas in the coming days," he added.

Green Economy

This year’s World Environment Day, will be marked in Kigali, Rwanda, today. Rwanda has successfully embraced a transition to green economy.

While Rwanda faces many challenges ranging from overcoming poverty and developing sustainable energy resources to land degradation, this ‘land of a thousand hills’ is developing forward-looking strategies including the development of renewable energies like hydro and solar power, biogas and methane gas for power generation.

The solar power, biogas, and wind energies are abundant resources that are available in Kenya. Experts say the renewable sources if properly harnessed would not only check on environmental pollution but also reduce the cost of energy for cheap production of household commodities.

"Besides tree planting initiatives, the adoption of green energy is a source of environment conservation, use of either wind or sun and other available renewable energies would also be a plus to the country as it can use the same to enter into the global carbon market, a virgin market but a potential source of revenue," said Fred Njau, formerly a project coordinator with Green Belt Movement.