Environment, Climate Change and Forestry Cabinet Secretary Soipan Tuya has said tree growing is an effective antidote to the worsening climate crisis which she termed as the greatest existential threat currently facing humanity.
“Trees are our greatest allies in the fight against the climate crisis which is the greatest existential threat of our time,” the CS said.
She spoke Wednesday at Embakasi Garrison in Nairobi County where she joined defence cabinet colleague Aden Duale and the Kenya Defence Forces rank and file led by Deputy Army Commander Maj Gen Mohamed Hassan and General Officer Commanding (GOC) Eastern Command Maj Gen Luka Kutto.
Tuya said Kenya’s security apparatus including the military and the police had acknowledged climate change as an escalator of insecurity especially among communities occupying vulnerable ecosystems and degraded landscapes.
“As you have seen with our colleague CS Kindiki of Interior, climate change is topping insecurity problems in our country. So, it is an existential problem which commands us to have and to strengthen the whole-of-Government approach,” she said.
With an annual target of propagating 80 million seedlings and planting 50 million trees, CS Tuya said the military was her ministry’s greatest ally in the Kenya Kwanza administration’s flagship climate action programme that seeks to raise Kenya’s tree cover to 30pc in ten years by growing 15 billion trees.
CS Tuya explained that the new approach where each cabinet secretary has been assigned specific degraded ecosystems for full restoration was meant to shift the country from the traditional tree planting to nurturing trees to maturity.
“We have targets for each and every ministry, department and agency of government. We have shifted from simply planting trees to growing them to maturity.” She said.
“That’s why, as a cabinet directive, we have a cabinet secretary, with all their departments and agencies, out there in the field making sure that we’re keeping up with our targets,” Tuya added.
On his part, CS Duale acknowledged that climate change was an insecurity multiplier and assured that his ministry was determined to achieve its seedling propagation and tree growing targets ahead of schedule.
He said KDF had established a dedicated ecosystem restoration unit charged with driving forward the tree growing initiative that had, among other achievements, overseen the growing of 12 million since the launch of the initiative in December 2022.
Maj Gen Luka Kutto, KDF’s GOC Eastern Command also spoke at the event, assuring that his soldiers were determined to overshoot set seedling propagation and tree growing targets.
