It began as a local project to find a solution to frequent flooding and has turned into an example of reforestation to be replicated at national level: a rural community in Kenya has successfully restored 50 per cent of a forest once devastated, planting 300,000 trees in fewer than five years.

Without trees, flooding would be more frequent

Located around 480 kilometres west of the capital Nairobi, the Mirema forest is today a lush green lung of Kenya, crossed by numerous watercourses that feed into the Kuja river. This is an unprecedented success in terms of reforestation: the initiative was taken in 2018 by the Mirema community forest, a local association, which began planting native plant varieties in an area devastated by extraction activities (especially charcoal and gold) and by loggers.

As a result of deforestation and therefore the absence of natural barriers, watercourses swollen by rainfall repeatedly swept away crops, causing severe food shortages and forcing farmers to rely on government aid. Many families were forced to emigrate in search of new land to cultivate.

Mirema's trees have a higher-than-average survival rate

The main objective of the reforestation campaign was precisely to protect the community from flooding: the 300,000 trees planted from 2018 to today have achieved a survival rate of 70 per cent, a figure considerably higher than other government-led initiatives, where usually at least half of the plants do not survive in the long term.

An unexpected outcome that quickly attracted the attention of the Kenya forest service (Kfs), the government reforestation programme. Not only that: Migori county — which is home to the forest —, the humanitarian group World vision international and a local bank have all begun supporting the initiative. Thanks to all these convergences, the project has evolved and has now become a case study for other reforestation programmes in Kenya.

The success of the initiative is linked to the combination of two reforestation methods: the first approach is that of farmer-managed natural regeneration, in which seedlings already present in nature, within the forest, are nurtured through to full growth. The second approach used by the community was tree planting: this involved introducing nursery-grown seedlings into the forest.

Kenya: restoring the rest of the forest in the next five years

The result achieved has been enormous: more than 400 hectares of forest restored, practically half the original size of the Mirema forest. Over these years, and still today twice a year during the long rainy season, mass planting days take place, in which the entire community is called upon to participate.

Inspired by the Mirema community forest project, Migori county is now working on a law to incentivise the cultivation of plants destined for reforestation, an initiative that is also useful for mitigating the damage caused by climate change. But even more concretely, Kfs has drawn up a plan to restore the remaining portion of the Mirema forest over the next five years.