Climate Change, community and conservation

 

Climate change is a major international issue, and it is expected to account for about 20% of global increase in water scarcity, worsen the extremes of drought and floods. Some areas are experiencing torrential rains and floods while others are experiencing less and less rainfall year after year. Other effects of climate change include increased scarcity of other natural resources including forestry products, pasture, fisheries and loss of loss of species including wildlife due to perpetual droughts and floods. Wildlife behavior change is expected, increasing levels of human/wildlife conflicts. Emergence of new, invasive species is also an expected effect of climate change. Poverty levels, loss of jobs, hunger, diseases and conflicts over access to resources are major calamities expected from climate change. On Mt. Kenya glaciers are retreating at an unprecedented rate, altering the beauty of the mountain, threatening tourism resources and park facilities, rivers originating are drying,  temperatures are increasing, mosquito infestation and spread of malaria is being observed for the first time,  wildlife habitat is disrupted and downstream fisheries projects have closed down due to lack of flowing water, Hydroelectric power generation and the mega rice irrigation projects from Mt. Kenya rivers are threatened. Climate change is caused largely by human action including mega deforestation and emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Emissions mainly come from burning of fossil fuels that produce the greenhouse gases and especially carbon and carbon dioxide. Forests act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide and giving out oxygen.

Our actions on climate change aim at reducing impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the society by designing adaptation strategies.

 

Our projects and activities in this program include: community-forestry, eco-tourism, renewable energy, beekeeping, and fish farming.

 

• Climate change education: Education is an essential element of the global response to climate change. It helps communities understand and address the impacts of global warming, encourages changes in their attitudes and behavior and helps them adapt to climate change-related trends. We conduct climate change education targeting schools, the youth, communities and the general public.

• Community-forestry Program: The clearing and burning of forests account for almost 20% of all global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, hence immensely contributing to global warming. We promote community based on-farm forestry as an alternative source of forest products. This community-forestry program facilitates a variety of initiatives focused on supporting both households and commercial level production. We help build community capacity and harness their knowledge through organized groups that share and support one another. With the mission of reducing deforestation, we assist communities to improve technical capacity in agro-forestry production, increase economic opportunity, and strengthen families. We coordinate technical assistance for the implementation and maintenance of agro-forestry systems of production, along with the collective processing and marketing of products. Mt. Kenya Conservation Forum works with research institutions, development partners and government institutions to provide technical assistance to local community and to create new markets for forestry products including seeds, seedlings and organic products.

• Community Based Ecotourism Program: We promote environment-friendly activities like ecotourism. A key objective of this program is breaking local dependence on protected natural resources for economic gains and their livelihoods. The Community-based Ecotourism program focuses on assisting the communities to develop nature-based tourism micro-enterprises providing economic opportunities for the local people through organized groups. We provide technical assistance to such groups including tourism product development, marketing and general business management.

• Promoting sustainable agriculture: we encourage local community to adopt sustainable agricultural practices including use of organic manures, increase energy and water efficiency, crop rotation, human-wildlife conflicts mitigation and integrated crop/livestock pracises.

• Renewable Energy Program: This is a community based program aimed at reducing the overexploitation of forests resources through various sustainable and innovative initiatives. The program helps us to meet the twin objective of combating climate change on one hand and energy security, on the other.

Our Renewable Energy Projects include:

• Improved Cook stove Project:use of fire wood and charcoal burning from the forest resources significantly contributes to deforestation and resulting to environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. We encourage community members in the villages to reduce their household fuel wood consumption by building energy saving cook stoves that use less fuel wood using free locally available materials- dried grass, sand, clay and water.

• Biogas Project for schools and households: This program is also aimed at reducing pressure on forest resources. A lot of forest- sourced fuel wood is used in schools for cooking and heating bathing water. We are promoting biogas as an alternative source of energy. Priority is given to schools and households keeping livestock as dung is used as raw material for biogas production.

• Solar Power Project: Due cold weather around Mt. Kenya a lot of wood is used to heat water for bathing both at household level and in schools. We are promoting solar as an alternative source of energy.