This project will help restore Kenya's only tropical rainforest while supporting farmers surrounding the forest in adapting income-generating activities compatible with the forest's ecology. The project will alleviate climate change by increasing tree cover while helping local farmers to adapt to a changing climate.
The Kakamega Rainforest is gradually being destroyed through illegal logging and conversion to subsistence agriculture. A feedback loop exists through which the loss of the forest, combined with climate change, decreases the fertility of farmland in the area surrounding the forest. The farmers are under pressure to convert more forest land to agriculture and to farm the land more intensively, resulting in soil erosion and further loss of land productivity.
KWENCH's project will restore native vegetation to parts of the forest that have been degraded through illegal logging and agricultural conversion. This will help to improve the climate around the forest while capturing carbon in native vegetation, thus alleviating climate change. At the same time, we will work with local farmers to enhance their livelihoods through the adaptation of sustainable farming practices, providing them with extensive training, and linking them with value chains.
The Kakamega Rainforest Restoration project will serve as a demonstration that ecologically sustainable farming practices can contribute to ecosystem restoration and climate change alleviation while increasing the economic well-being of local farmers. We hope and expect that this approach will be adopted throughout the forest area, in other parts of Kenya and throughout Africa.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
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