Women help to save Kenya’s last rainforest

Read More

Kakamega Forest, the only surviving rainforest in Kenya, is under threat from overexploitation, but women’s groups are finding ways to both use and protect the forest’s resources.

Listed in 2010 by Unesco as a World Heritage Site, Kakamega Forest is the easternmost remnant of the prehistoric Guineo-Congolian Forest. It is a sanctuary for a variety of endemic birds, insects and more than 380 plant species, many of which are not found anywhere else in Kenya. 

People living adjacent to Kakamega Forest depend on it for timber, fuel wood, herbal medicines, building materials and other resources for daily life. But high levels of poverty often mean the resources are being harvested in an unsustainable manner.

“During my early days in this area, the forest was very thick. That has really changed,” says conservationist Maridah Khalawa. “We have lost a number of very important trees like the kumulembe tree that we used to treat a number of diseases, including ulcers.” 

Khalawa believes there is a way for people to both protect and profit from the forest, so she founded the Muliru Farmers’ Conservation Group. 

The group has beehives in the forest, which they harvest honey every three months, demonstrating that people can benefit from the forest while conserving it. To use medicinal trees, the group promotes an ethical harvesting procedure: barks, leaves and root parts can only be harvested from mature trees so as not to interfere with the growth of younger ones. 

Agnes Mulimi, the head of Shamiloli Forest Conservation Green Growers, works with a philosophy similar to Khalawa’s in leading her group’s agroforestry and reforestation effort. The all-women group was founded in 2000 and formally registered in 2015. It trains its members on alternative ways of deriving an income from the forest and distributes tree seedlings to encourage reforestation.

“We give people these [eucalyptus and cypress]seedlings for free and also offer planting advice,” she says. “We are against wasting even a single tree.” 

Government forestry officers allow the group to grow crops in the forest as long as such planting does not require cutting down indigenous trees. 

The Shamiloli group grows camphor basil and sells it to a factory managed by the Muliru Farmers’ Conservation Group. 

Others, such as the Valonji Women Group in the Shinyalu area, are working to reduce household consumption of forest resources like firewood. The group makes and sells energy efficient stoves that preserve heat because they are moulded from clay and therefore use less firewood than the traditional three-stone open fires usually used for cooking. They also have 23 beehives for additional income, harvesting about 12kg of honey every three months, which they sell for 1 100 Kenyan shillings ($8.61) a kilogramme. 

Inger Anderson, executive director of the United National Environmental Programme, said at the 66th UN Status of Women meeting last year: “We have had enough male-dominated solutions. A just transition to a green, sustainable future requires gender responsive approaches.” 

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here.