 My name is Sakari Samoei, a citizen scientist here, which normally takes these water levels on a daily basis, and I come from this particular community. In case of any catastrophe, I'm the first person to be affected. For example, when the water level goes down and down, then I'll miss taking water from here. I'll be in a very big problem. The research team has been working on trying to estimate the importance of these forests for the water cycle. When we started working in this forest and started talking to different stakeholders, we realised that there was a sort of a playing game without understanding how things were connected. So by presenting this evidence on how water and forest are connected, we are hoping that the actors who make decisions in both sectors also find a common ground for discussions on what the solutions are. Forest, as we know, they play a very important role in the hydrological cycle. First they protect the water sources from loss of water through evaporation, but also the vegetation in the forest will enhance smooth infiltration, percolation of water through the canopies, down into the soil through the litter, the water gets clean and then most of the water sinks in the soil, and therefore the water table becomes now sustainable and we get rivers and springs now becoming viable. We need capacity building to enhance the monitoring approach so the communities and the population need to be educated about these techniques of monitoring. It's important also to revise our curriculum regularly to see how it fits best in this system monitoring of water resources in the country. Indigenous forests play a very big role in terms of flow of water to the rivers. Compared to this, which is a cypress plantation, the ground is more or less bare. You can see the kind of service that you have. It shows that there was a lot of rains probably last night or the day before and there was a kind of run-off. There are many challenges. One is governance. You see, water and forestry unfolds under different policies. So there is a need to have those policies synchronized. To my right is the Mau Forest. It borders most of our tea estates. Most of the agricultural lands, when there's erosion, when there's heavy rainfall, there's a lot of soil that gets to these particular rivers. So these sedimentation levels affect the water volumes. So in order to mitigate those effects, monitoring is a must. The responsible authorities also require support from the government in terms of finances, in terms of facilities for them to be able to monitor the water. By knowing the water volumes, by knowing the water quality, flood planning is possible. The citizen scientists are the local community people. The river is their resource and the forest adjacent to them is their resource. So they benefit from both because they get the water for their domestic use. They benefit also from the forest because they are able to get firewood. They graze their animals in the forest and so these two resources are a great asset for them. When the land is built, we extract water from it. That's the reason why I started building. That's why I work on a land. When we have a land in our country, we come around here to collect water. We build and sell water. We collect water, we pay for it, then we enter our place. But the land is a part of the land. It's a good idea because you find that we cannot actually be everywhere. So if the community can actually assist us in collecting the data, then that one is a plus on our side. The main challenges that we normally encounter when we are actually doing this monitoring is in terms of finances. Because you know to generate water quality data is an expensive process. Because we require the treatments, we require the chemicals. So at times you find that you want to do the monitoring but the necessary chemicals that are needed to generate the data are not there. Data sharing in general is difficult because people sit on their data, they stick to their data, they try to sell it, it's a kind of power issue, I have the data so then I can make maybe more decisions or you need my data, you have to buy them. Information is still power. Of course this attitude worldwide is changing but not enough yet. So this is where we come in as well with the private sector together also in the Sondu base and the communities to at least have these kind of platforms and exchange what I collect might benefit you as well and what you're collecting benefits me as well. So why can't we not share it and try to solve these huge environmental problems that we are facing?