Mau forest and the lessons on climate change

Writer Dann Okoth spoke to Dr Louis Verchot, a principal scientist at Climate Change at the Centre for International Forestry Research, on the effects of the Copenhagen talks on Kenya.

How will Kenya cope with the effects of climate change beyond Copenhagen?

Climate change is not yet a major stress factor in Kenya’s development. But it will affect agriculture, the mainstay of livelihoods. There are many other sources of stress. The rapidly growing population in rural areas means that farm sizes are getting too small to support a family. Soil degradation is another very significant problem that limits agricultural productivity.

 Our research shows that as much as 70 per cent of the agricultural lands in some high population density areas are moderately to severely degraded, the cost of farm inputs remain high and out of reach of many small-scale farmers.

Adding climate change only worsens the situation. The key to Kenya coping with climate change is going to be investment in agriculture to raise productivity, diversification of the economy to create employment opportunities outside of agriculture, and investment in education to build people.

What would be the real cost of climate change mitigation for Kenya and can we afford it?

I am not sure that anyone has calculated the real cost of adaptation for Kenya. The situation in the Mau Complex is indicative of the source of the problems. Land is often used, as a political weapon during elections and proper management of national forest lands is not possible for a technical service like the Forest Department in this context. Certainly people need land to earn their livelihoods. At the same time, Kenya needs forests to protect its water supply and provide for other needs of society. Sometimes these two needs come into conflict and when that happens, these conflicts need to be managed. That is the role of a professional forestry department. Anticipating problems and planning for development will be much less costly in the long run than trying to fix a problem after years of neglect. Hopefully, the lessons from the Mau circus will be learned so that mistakes are not repeated.

Is the money set aside by developing nations to fund climate mitigation in developing nations enough?

Kenya faces many development challenges and climate change will make meeting goals even more difficult. Developed countries are discussing making significant assistance available ($10 billion per year) to help developing countries adapt to climate change. To put this in context, this is equivalent to about 10 per cent of current official development assistance - both from bilateral and multilateral sources. So it is a lot of money. But the devil is always in the detail. We have all seen pledges by developed countries for development assistance, but when the time comes, the money available falls short of the pledges. We have also seen governments manage resources poorly.