Africa-Press – Kenya. The Ministry of Environment has moved in to tap into the massive manpower and resources at the disposal of its Education counterpart in latest bid to ramp up tree-growing initiatives.
On Tuesday, Environment Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya and her Education counterpart Ezekiel Machogu co-chaired an inter-ministerial meeting on how the two ministries can collaborate on the 15 billion national tree-growing agenda.
With an estimated 17 million learners and 600,000 educators in institutions spread across the country and a target of growing 35 million trees and producing 300 million seedlings annually, the Ministry of Education is one of the key drivers of the 15 billion tree-growing programme.
Following the inter-ministerial meeting at Nairobi Arboretum, the two ministries issued a joint statement that was read by Basic Education Principal Secretary Belio Kipsang.
He said the Ministry of Environment will ensure the timely provision of 15,000kg of tree seeds annually to enable the Ministry of Education to meet its seedling production target of 300 million.
Belio said the Environment ministry, through the Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, will provide the Education ministry with technical support on seedling production and tree growing, including site-species matching.
He said the two ministries will jointly strengthen coordination of tree growing and seedling propagation in schools and learning institutions by cascading a coordination framework beyond focal points in the state departments to cover county and subcounty levels.
During the meeting, the two ministries will jointly integrate the Environment’s ministry’s Jaza Miti application with that of the Ministry of Education’s Elimu app to enhance the recording and reporting of tree-growing activities by learning institutions.
The two ministries also agreed to jointly develop an award scheme for recognising the best-performing educational institutions.
The 15 billion programme is a flagship government climate action initiative anchored by the 10-year National Landscape and Ecosystem Restoration Strategy.
The programme seeks to raise Kenya’s tree cover by 30 per cent by the year 2032.
In total, the government seeks to restore 10.6 million hectares of degraded ecosystems and landscapes across 11 intervention areas.
Belio said since the launch of the programme slightly more than a year ago, the Ministry of Environment, working within the ‘whole-of-Government and whole-of-society’ delivery framework, has made tremendous progress.
He said some of the progress made include the development of the National Landscape and Ecosystem Restoration Strategy 2023-32; construction of 11 new seed centres to increase access to high quality tree seeds and the distribution of 100 metric tonnes of seeds estimated to produce two billion seedlings.
Other strides include the establishment of the 15 billion and restoration secretariat headed by the coordinator and anchored at the State Department for Forestry; the development of Forest Adoption and Tree Growing Incentive Frameworks; and overseeing the growing of 300 million seedlings across the country as recorded on Jaza Miti application.
The two ministries will also jointly design communication and awareness creation campaigns.
Belio said the climax of the programme last year was the National Tree Growing Day, Kenya’s first green holiday, on November 13 last year, during which over a record 150 million trees were grown in one day.
Tuya, on her part, said the ministry has set targets for each ministry, department and agency on how much they will contribute. She said the Education ministry has numbers and networks across the country.
“My ministry has been engaged in setting the stage for where each MDA (ministries, departments and agencies) will plug into and take their target.”
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