Maathai urges ban on exotic tree species
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Nobel Peace prize winner and renowned Kenyan environmental campaigner Professor Wangari Maathai has called for a ban on the growing use of exotic tree species in her country. She singled out the eucalyptus for special criticism, but said all exotic species damaged the environment and undermined people’s ability to cope with the adverse effects of climate change.
Speaking at the 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry, which opened on August 24th, in Nairobi, Kenya, Professor Maathai argued that eucalyptus, widely grown commercially in many African countries, has greatly contributed to the destruction of ecosystems because of its thirst for water.
“Exotic trees, especially eucalyptus, have destroyed the biodiversity around them by killing the vegetation and sucking up water,” Professor Maathai said. She urged the adoption of native species in the renewed campaign to increase tree cover across the African continent.
Maathai attacked the Kenyan Government for policies which she said encouraged the destruction of natural forests and biodiversity zones, replacing them with monoculture tree plantations, mostly exotic species grown commercially.
“These monocultures are like dead forests because they do not allow other species to coexist with them,” she said. There are concerns that the Kenyan Government has allocated hundreds of hectares of natural forest, including parts of Mau forest in the west of the country, to private citizens who have used the land for eucalyptus and cedar trees.
Kenya is already reeling from the effects of a prolonged dry spell with experts here saying the country has not experienced a normal rainy season for nearly four years. The Deputy Prime Minister, Kalonzo Musyoka, who opened the Congress, said Kenya was now committed to starting a massive re-afforestation programme.
Romano Kiome, Kenya’s Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, said the Government would soon introduce regulations requiring all farmers to devote 10% of their agricultural land to tree planting.
Kiome said farmers would have to follow strict regulations, some to prevent them from planting eucalyptus along river banks and water catchment areas.
But Professor Maathai argues that the absence of effective extension services for farmers makes it difficult to stop them planting eucalyptus.
The conference takes place amidst growing concern that deforestation and agriculture have played a key role in accelerating global warming by releasing substantial amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“What we are experiencing today in the forests and the lakes that are drying up is an accumulation of many bad practices we have carried out over many years including cultivating in wetlands, planting exotic tree species and settling in forests,” said Maathai. Her Nobel Peace Prize honoured her vast campaign to promote the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, which resulted in the planting of millions of trees.
Other speakers included the head of the United Nations Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, who called for renewed efforts to scale up tree planting across the continent, both to reverse the rate of deforestation and to protect the climate, but also as a source of revenue and an integral part of the food production process, especially among poor farmers.
Dr. Dennis Garrity, the Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre and the main organizer of the conference, strongly advocated policy changes by governments and donors. He urged them to start looking at agriculture as a solution to deforestation and a key aspect of climate change mitigation and adaptation, rather than considering it entirely as a problem.
Dr Garrity presented highlights from a recent study which he said showed that agroforestry had tremendously increased tree cover to over one billion hectares, while during the same period deforestation had greatly increased and reduced the size of natural forests.
He admitted that eucalyptus can have destructive effects on the environment because of its high water needs, and said that its widespread adoption across Africa had reduced the water table. But he argued that eucalyptus trees have been widely adopted across Africa for their unique characteristics as fast growers and a good source of timber and fuel.
There are however others in the field of agroforestry who say that the problem with eucalyptus is with the way the various species have been planted indiscriminately, such as on river banks, ignoring the dangers the trees can cause on those specific ecosystems.
With many countries reporting an increased frequency and severity of extreme weather conditions, including droughts and floods, coupled with the recent food shortages, many at the conference say the time has come to return to trees as the most natural and least costly way of storing carbon.
