 Thank you for keeping us company. This is Y254 TV discussion Monday kicks off right now with our topic of discussion being the climate change and forest conservation. I'm speaking to Julius Kamawizu, chief conservator of forest with Kenya Forest Service and Dr. Richard Muita from, he is a senior system director Kenya Meteorological Department. It's an honor to have you gentlemen, many thanks for coming. Welcome. Now, we begin with some facts here where the science and impacts of global warming are speeding up with the data from world meteorological organization showing that a five five year period of 2014 to 2019 has been a warmer on records and the WHO therefore says the carbon cutting efforts must be intensified. We saw last week a busy people marching in the cities, including even in Kenya. They were calling on governments to address the climate change and as we speak about 60 heads of states are meeting in a special UN summit with countries expected to announce a new action to limit the course of warming or speak initiatives developed by a coalition of nations where our president is there. Now, UN General Secretary Gutierrez has asked that as well as committing to zero emissions by 2050 countries should reduce subsidies for fossil fuels and stop building new coal fired power stations. We saw even Lamu coal plant being cancelled and we want to begin another discussion tonight, the summit that is there. We have seen the effects of global warming. I want to begin with you Julius. What do you think will happen? What's the essence or what effect will we see after this summit? Basically, I'll speak from the Kenya Forest Service perspective where we are mandated to ensure sustainable management, protection and conservation of forest resources in Kenya. And I'll also tackle the implication or the relationship between forest conservation and protection and climate change. And therefore one of the segment of the 74 unga currently happening is actually the issue of deforestation which also has an impact relationship with the climate change. And therefore from where we see it as a country, basically what we would expect is a more solid commitment, especially towards addressing the issues of all threats that may lead to forest degradation and deforestation. And that's why we come in as Kenya Forest Service to support the call to ensure that all the forest resources we have are actually secured and protected. Thank you. Dr. Mutai, from the Met Department, I'm sure you have been highly affected by the climate change and speaking of global warming and we saw what happened with the government of Kenya bringing down the Lamu pot with the coal. How do you think this summit will be a game changer moving on? Thank you very much, Hilary, for having me here. I would say that... Just a mic, please, thank you. I would say that climate change is a global issue and therefore as Kenya Met Roljiko Department, our mandate is actually to just observe, you know, surveys, atmospheric and oceanic indicators of climate that, of course, includes temperature, rainfall, wind direction, pollution and all that kind of stuff. And after observations, then we have to analyze and give you the scientific interpretation in terms of the directions which these particular indicators are taking. So, from the current summit, leader summit in New York, I guess most of the key message that should actually be discussed is that global warming and climate change is a reality that is affecting all regions across the globe, but more specially across the sub Saharan Africa because our adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change is relatively low compared to that of the March developed countries and therefore the message is that the African leaders will be present and other goodwill ambassadors. They should actually propose in terms of those countries that highly pollute the atmosphere and thus causing the increase in the global temperature to at least adhere to the leaders agreements all the way from the Kyoto Protocol to the recently Paris Agreement and therefore if they can adhere to that without necessarily causing a lot of, you know, we have skeptics who say that there is no climate change and so on, but the reality is it's changing and so as a Met service, we are very much determined to continuously observe and tell you how the weather and the climate is going to affect us. Before we dive deeply into this matter, do you think Kenya will get to 100% renewable power like promised by the president by 2020? Well, I think it's a commitment and it's a great commitment and I think that's why we must be able to move. If you look at the country, basically we have a very big potential. For example, if we at least conserve our water ecosystems, our forests, water towers, we are also able to sustain the hydro power energy, which is a renewable energy. If you look at the weed energy, you have seen like for example we are hosting a weed energy in a forest estate in a gong hills basically to support that. We have Jodamo, for example in Menegai, also again we are partnering with the GDC on the same issue. If you look at solar, it has not even been tapped. More than 70% of our land is semi arid areas, which have many, many sunshine hours that can be harnessed towards able to generate renewable energy. So I think it is possible with all converged efforts from everywhere it is able to achieve and actually eliminate the issue of renewable energy in this country. Alright, now Dr. Moita, would you attribute the current weather variation to climate change and what would be the main factors apart from what we have heard about the industry emissions? Well, I think that's a good question. I guess that when we look at climate change, the best way to know if there is climate change is to examine the behavior of the metrodical parameters such as temperature wind and so on. What I mentioned earlier and if we consider some 100 or over 100 years ago, the mean average temperatures across Kenya was around 24 degrees Celsius, but currently up to about 2015 you find that that average has increased by slightly more than one degree. Suggesting that the temperatures have generally increased, of course is not homogeneous, some areas may have been affected more than others. And I would say that from what we have analyzed, the temperature has increased at least in the last 50 years across many areas in Kenya. Also rainfall has declined significantly in some areas, but has not changed much in some other areas. But we might not necessarily say that all the changes that we see are attributed to natural causes like the emission of greenhouse gases and so on. There is also the issue of an increasing population. Remember, our current population should be different from what we saw in 2009. We have not yet gotten the results from the current census that just ended. Again, when you look at issues of land use, such as the expansion for agriculture, Kenya is an agricultural economy and as a population increases, then the land use changes in terms of the infrastructure, in terms of the sizes of the farms and also the number of mouths to feed and in terms of food security. So I guess there are other factors which are non-climatic, but somewhat they are also contributing to the issue of climate change and variability. I think I would start by saying and appreciating Kenyans, wherever they are. Kenyans now are more aware of the importance of forest. And they are a bit also able to be cautious when it comes to the aspects of deforestation. And therefore, as a Kenya Forest Service, we are happy that we are working and we are serving a public that is very much aware of the relationship between forests and how critical they are to supplying not only the forest goods, but also the ecological services like water provision. And therefore, it is something that we are happy that any criminal activity today, any regarding happening anywhere in the country will be able to know. And this is coming actually from the Kenyan public. And I really want to appreciate that kind of openness in terms of communicating because we cannot do it alone as Kenya Forest Service. We do appreciate that there are a lot of different threats to forest sector in Kenya. It could start from the issues of ecological logging. It could talk to about the issue of chakubanning. We have also issue of overgracing in our forest states. We also have, as he said, talking about expansion of agriculture. I think what we mean is when people expand for agriculture, it also means they are encroaching on forest territories basically to try to get more land for farming. And we must appreciate that most of the forest land is actually very arabo. And this is the exact temptation. Even for the people that are neighboring this forest, they are tempted to come and encroach to produce or to have more agriculture productivity. We also have issues of human settlement, irregular settlement in the forest. It's across the country. Even in Nairobi, basically in some forests within Gong Road Forest, others we have issues of Mao, issues of Mount Elegon, Cherangani, Mount Kenya and Abadias. It's something that cut across the country and the forest. But for us, what we have to encourage Kenyans is to know that if we don't protect these forests, then our survival is at stake. And therefore it is good for all of us to appreciate that and we are able now to respect the forest boundaries and be able to keep off so that we can be able now to protect our resources. So it's a combination of issues that Kenya Forest Service is dealing with on a daily basis, together with of course the government. And we are happy that we are now working together with what we call community forest associations. These are institutions that are formed across all our forests. And they are able to partner with us to be able to secure and keep our forests safe. So it is something that Kenya Forest Service can do even though we are doing it through our forest strangers, but we cannot be able to work alone. We need complementarity from communities and other government agencies and the Kenyans publicate in general. Alright, the same question I think I will rebut to you Dr. Motahi, deforestation. I am sure in a way it has affected your predictability of the weather changes in this, in our region. It has affected so many people. How now do you move forward? What strategies have you put in place to ensure as much as the forestry department is making sure no cutting of trees or increasement to forest in the department? What other measures can you use to predict the weather patterns? I would say that for us we have just been trying to expand our observation networks because our premise is based on the observations we make from the ground. We have over say over 500 rain gauges across the country. Some are in forests, reserve areas, some are in schools, some are in our stations because we have stations in all the 47 counties. We also have other stations that measure other variables like temperature, atmosphere, pressure and so on. So our role actually is to improve the network so that we can get as much observations from much of the country so that when we ingest that information in our forecasting models then we can be able to make better forecasts. Now the challenge is that as climate changes some of the things that cause climate change and variability are out of our control. For example the issues of greenhouse gases and so on. Issues of land degradation where people cut trees and so on. Where the microclimate was initially good, maybe a certain area was receiving good rains. The weather was very good but when you clear all the trees for example it is estimated that we lose about 12,000 hectares of land, forest land every year in this country because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. That means that if there was a microclimate factors which are driving the climate for that particular area then they will be affected even if we will have observation networks in that area. Meaning that our predictions or our focus will be accurate but then the impact might more or less either increase or remain. So I guess the greatest indicator that climate variability and impacts are affecting us is the frequency of issues like drought for example. You find that in the 1960s we used to only get one major drought maybe in 10 years. But in the 1970s we could see about two major droughts then come closely to the 1990s and since 2000 we almost getting drought every year. And therefore that is a clear indication that unless we do certain things in the right way like for example a forestation would be one of them. Because there is an advantage when we have forested areas they also serve as carbon sinks. They absorb those greenhouse gases such that it also goes into improving the soil fertility and therefore it could benefit our agriculture production systems. Plus many other it could rejuvenate the water systems, the ecosystem where we have seen some rivers drying up and so on. So I think the message is if we can plant as many trees as possible we can be able to return the weather patterns to where they were before. That would be a good thing. Speaking of planting trees I want to get from you Julius. What calls have you made? What has the forestry department been doing to ensure the calls for planting trees is ongoing? Have you been planting trees? Thank you for that question and I want to register some of the successes that perhaps are not known to this country. The encroachment problems you are dealing with today are historical. From 2007 I can confirm to you from 2007 up to date because I am more than 10 years. No single piece of land has been degazated from the public forest. So the issues you are hearing about such romance and encroachment are beyond that period of time. It also tells you the commitment that the government and the Kenya Forest Service has made to ensure for the last from 2007 when we had the new forest act 2005 that the degazement of forest has not happened. What we are now trying to do is to be able now to create more space within the public forest and more so be able to restore the degraded areas. Therefore that is a success to register. Now in terms of tree planting basically this has been happening and you realize that basically if you look at the 10% recover the public forest which Kenya Forest Service manages is only 4% of the land area. It tells you that if you have to get 10% we can only now expand the space within the private farms and the farmland. And therefore that's why now we are trying to encourage Kenyans in their own farm areas as per the farm forestry rules 2009 which require any farmland to have about 10% of it at the trees. Because that's only where we can be able to recover the space. But also it says that as a government right now a 10% recover strategy has been developed. It is being coordinated of course by the Ministry of Environment but we are leading in terms of technical approach and also highly linked to the Ministry of Interior to be able to drive a joint campaign towards 10% recover by 2022. Now this basically this strategy has been developed. It is ongoing and we target by 2022 we should be able to plant at least 1.8 billion tree cedrics. And that requires almost for the last 2 years and the coming 3 years to almost produce and plant about 360 million cedrics. That may look as a big number of course. But with the combination of efforts between us and everyone else it's possible to do so. And therefore this is a strategy we are using right now to enhance and to encourage Kenyans to be able to plant trees. Planting trees cannot be left for Kenya Forest Service. Planting trees is the responsibility of every Kenyan. Because in where you live there is a land and if you plant there it will also give you benefits. It could give anyone else. So it's a joint effort and we are really happy that most ministries department and agencies of government have actually come on board to be able to take up the issues of planting trees themselves. I will ask this because I have seen during events or when there is something being integrated or if there is something being given out. People would plant trees. Someone in the Rulos I know they would plant trees anytime they want. If today I feel like I want to plant a tree for an example would I work to Karura Forest and plant a tree? Well basically of course there is a rule of engagement basically. You would have to engage with us so that for example Karura Forest basically it has a plan already on how things should be done. So basically you have come to engage with us and of course we have supported a lot of people, groups, individuals to come and plant within our forest. It doesn't have to be Karura. If you come to us you will tell you the greatest need that we need for you to plant trees perhaps could be in Gong Road Forest. It could be in Kibiko. It could be somewhere outside there in Dodori. It could be anywhere depending where you are. But also beyond that engagement we also are telling Kenyans themselves to look at other opportunities. From where you come from perhaps somewhere you can be able to go and plant trees. So that also you can change the lives and livelihood of the people. Because if the people themselves are improved livelihood they will not come to the forest for irregularities basically. So we are also encouraging people to be able to have a culture of planting trees within their own land. And I think that's something that we can talk about. Then the other thing would be for example you came from a certain school. It is a public institution. It is also required within 10% of it land should be 10% recover. It is also good for you to go back where the school you came from. Talk to the administration and also make an impact by mobilizing the school kids to plant trees in that school. So there are very many other options that we can be able to employ. Are we achieving the 10% forest cover by this? Yes. And maybe your prediction. How far will it take us to get to the rest of the six? Well already we are at 7.2%. That's a good idea. 7.2% and we are very sure we do the strategy that we are employing and the public awareness. You know like today by being here this evening. It doesn't give us a platform to encourage Kenyans, millions of Kenyans, especially the young people. And also tell them they have a role to play. And what we are saying is a joint effort. So how well we mobilize Kenyans is how close we will be to 10%. But remember as you go to 10% we must be able to protect the gains that we have. And therefore it's a combination of protecting what we have and also encouraging Kenyans to plant more. So by 2022 we are very sure with the commitment we have because the government has provided about one billion Kenyans for this financial year to support this process. And many other private sector and many landstakes who are coming together to us to actually contribute to this process. It is something that is achievable. All right. As we wind up Dr. Bhutei is a politician. He made a joke or it's just a mere ignorant of the facts. You mentioned of planting trees. And you said planting trees have nothing to do with the rains. As a met expert what would you say about the trees and the rains? I would say that trees play a very critical role in terms of moderating the local weather of that particular area. I would urge this politician to just pay a visit to a place that is highly forested or has trees and then take time to visit a place where there are no trees and maybe tell us whether there is a difference in terms of the weather. I think that would be the best answer to this particular person and I can give a practical example. If you just go to Central Kenya place called Gatanga in Gatanga sometimes back prior to 1984 that place I guess it was more of a semi arid area. There were no kind of trees. People had cut trees and so on. But then there was that you know called by the former president President Moi to pandemic. And sort of the community in that area responded to that call. If you compare the satellite images of that area at that particular time and today you would be surprised. At that time most farmers who are still alive today will tell you they were not able to have anything on their farms. They kind of had dry periods all the time and their crops failed. But today that is one of the most productive areas in Kenya. If you want the most fresh fruits avocados and so on you would go to Gatanga and you would find them almost all the time meaning that there was a change in terms after they planted trees. Right now the place looks like it's a forest area although it is private land where people have their land and they are doing a lot of farming. They are fresh you know a lot of water flowing in those rivers. So in a sense one cannot be so ignorant to say that trees have nothing to do with the climate. If you cut all the trees we will go to something called desertification. When we have a desert like Israel you don't even get a single drop of rain. Go to the Sahara. They don't get a single drop of rain simply because there are no trees there. Okay all right as you wind up any recommendations as you speak about the climate change are your final words in regards to this. For me and thank you Hirade is just to tell and create interest to our Kenyans whatever they are that we are now in the short range period and this we should take advantage of this range. Yes to grow our maize and other crops but also to plant trees and I want to really encourage Kenyans to bring trees back to close them and I was telling someone for example if the young people and I know majority of us and majority of young people are listening to this program and even ask the parents if you for example said yes I'm going to celebrate my birthday and I am 12 years old or I'm 13 years old or 20 years old and you say yes fine I'll be able to blow the candles off I'll be able to cut the cake but what if I made a commitment to plant trees equals my age something that I can grow together with by the time I'm retiring I have something I can fall back to in terms of resources if we took that culture by all Kenyans today the 10% cover will be achieved very soon so it's for me to take this opportunity to actually thank Kenyans and to encourage them to take advantage of their short trains and plant trees and if we do so we'll be able to save this country our own generation and a future generation for water provision, for clean air and it's a guarantee by the constitution that clean and healthy environment is good for us it is not the responsibility of the Kenya Forest Service it's each one of us to make sure that we can do certain actions that actually have a positive implication for our own survival and those of the future generations alright doctor you have final words thank you possibly I talk in Swahili ni wasumubziawa Kenya kadika masumumzuwa majedlianu amboudu me kwanayo hapa ni yana husiyana na haswa shuguli za misitu yetu shuguli za kuweza kuongeza misitu sisi kamaidara utabiru wa halia hewa tayari tusha ibo utabiru etu kwamsimu ujawa voli amba oni november oktober november December kwa mataradiu etu ni kwa mba kadika mainua magaribi mwanchi mataradiya miyanzu amvua kwa indelia pasabuku me kwanamvua kadika semu zingineza enchi kwanziya wiki apili na yatatu kwanziwa kumi notaradiya kwa mba mvua ita kuwepo na kwa ujumla katika mainumengi enchi tu notaradiya umvua ambayo niya kupendeza kiwango cha wasutani na atasahidi ya kiwango cha wasutani kwa utunawa raiwa Kenya kamaulivi ambiwa na afisa uyukutoka kwa idara ya misitu kwa mba tu pandemiti kwa wingi miti wenda ika kua iwa po uvua ipo tu sigedu kwa pandemiti kipindi cha kiangazi asante joyemque jubusana Many thanks for coming gentlemen and here is in regards to climate change and forest conservation. They have been my guest. Now coming up next is why Masha reiki is on the decks and also I know I can tell this will be here for you keep it y254 my name is Dereva Hillary let's do this again next week on Monday for now good night