Maathai opts for indigenous trees

By: Emmanuel Sanya Mango on September 2nd, 2009

The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Professor Wangari Maathai, has appealed to all African leaders to promote the growing of indigenous trees as one of the best ways to preserve the environment.

Professor Maathai’s appeal came in a keynote address at the opening of the 2nd World Congress of Agroforesty – the intercropping of plants and trees – on the theme The Future of Land Use, at the United Nations complex in Gigiri, Nairobi.

She said that recently the Kenyan environment ministry had advised farmers to get rid of all eucalyptus trees from riverside areas and other water sources. Her Green Belt Movement is arguing for the promotion of the Faidherbia albida tree, known also as the apple-ring acacia.

Professor Maathai said African leaders must work together against some of the species that harm the environment (the eucalyptus, for example, needs large amounts of water).

She said the challenges of climate change, environmental degradation, food shortages, worsening poverty and the global financial downturn needed a collective effort by all stakeholders to redouble their efforts to protect and rehabilitate the environment.

By reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and providing smallholder farmers around the world with sustainable ways of increasing their production through agroforestry, Professor Maathai said, traditional farming systems could help to mitigate climate change.

She told the 1,400 delegate from across the world that African governments must promote and support small-scale farmers to adopt agroforestry by planting useful species like Faidherbia albida, which matures quickly, fixes nitrogen and leads to bumper harvests.

In South Africa, Malawi and Zambia the governments have encouraged farmers to plant Faidherbia. Professor Maathai says the results indicate that yields have risen. In  Zambia maize farmers are getting over four tonnes of maize per hectare as opposed to one tonne  on a farm relying on traditional methods.

She says  farmers  who have planted Faidherbia – a tree that  sheds its leaves during the rainy season and retains them in the dry season – find it has greatly contributed to higher yields.

Professor Maathai warned that the world faces the threat of food insecurity because of climate change, but said Africa is most likely to be hit more than other regions because its farmers depend on rain. This has made it very hard for them to adapt to climate change.

She said the only way Africa can adapt to such change is by sticking to indigenous crops like cassava, sweet potatoes, arrowroots and perennial crops like bananas and  sugar cane, crops that serve to cushion communities during droughts.