By Ebby Wamatsi

AS the Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) signs an agreement with Kenya to develop forests in arid and semi-arid areas, the country’s minister for environment and natural resources, Dr Newton Kulundu, is focusing on protecting the current forests.
According to Kulundu, wanton logging is putting Kenya in danger. He emphasises that the people should guard what they have and plant more.
“Prompt action has been taken, especially in Gichuku constituency (in central Kenya) by the government and it has sent police to guard the forests and arrest any person found logging,” he says.
“Any chief who is found to have authorised the logging will also be arrested.” Asked what will happen to squatters, he says that the ministry of lands will give them alternative plots to settle. He adds that those people who have their own land and yet depend on logging and cultivating in the forests, should go back to their farms. The FAO representative in Kenya, Isaac Bruce, confirms that the organisation has set aside $400,000 to develop forests in the arid and semi-arid areas. The plans to start the project are under way. The 13 countries to benefit from this project are Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal and Sudan.
As poverty is strongly linked to the depletion of natural resources, leading to inadequate and unsustainable development, Kulundu says that the main reason of developing forests in these areas is to open up human settlement areas in the dry parts. This, he says, will lead to alleviating poverty in the areas.
Bruce says that most tree barks in the arid and semi-arid areas will be used in producing gum.
About 83 per cent of Kenya falls within these dry lands. They are a living lesson in the need for sound management of the environment.
The lands have undergone long-term degradation that has reduced their potential productivity, thus driving away the people.
Desertification can be attributed in part to drought and highly variable precipitation, but its effect and extent have been greatly aggravated by unsuitable increases in human and livestock populations.
According to Kulundu, the Kenyan approach to this problem is to find the best way to combat desertification through scientific means and through community participation.
Otherwise it will destroy the resource base for agriculture, livestock protection and wildlife management.
Many people living near forests have opted to depend on trees as a means of survival despite the continued campaign against it by the government and environmentalists. They have practised logging for a long time and the forests are almost becoming depleted, causing ncertain droughts because of lack water catchments.
In the recent past there has been uncontrolled exploitation of the natural tree cover and yet forests only cover some 3 per cent of the land mass and they serve a major function in conserving water catchments and general preservation of the environment. The natural forests in Kenya are fairly well distributed throughout the country. The felling of the indigenous trees has now been restricted by the government and commercial exploitation of forests has been stopped.