Pastoral women leading land restoration efforts

In the searing heat of semi-arid northern Kenya, women armed with hoes, pangas and spades embark on land preparation ahead of the anticipated rainy season.

Theirs is not the usual cultivation to plant crops. They are tilling the degraded land to grow fodder, an essential link to their main source of livelihood —  livestock.

Vagaries of weather and unsustainable land use models have thrust women into the frontline,  making them engage in an occupation that is alien to them. Some confess that it is the first time they have learnt to use a hoe and a spade.

"I had never held a hoe until late last year when we were being trained on how to make half-moon bunds to sow grass seeds," says 45-year-old Jovana Lengila, a member of Kalama Community Conservancy in Samburu East.

Ms Lengila and a group of 30 women have been working on a land rehabilitation programme at the conservancy that involves cutting down an invasive species of acacia tree (acacia reficiens) and planting grass seeds on semi-circular bunds prepared on an even ground to reduce soil erosion and help in water retention.

This project, aimed at reclaiming degraded lands through restoration of vegetation cover, is spearheaded by conservation organisations operating in semi-arid northern Kenya in partnership with the National Environment Management Authority (Nema) .

The women at Kalama Conservancy have so far managed to reclaim 90 acres of land, starting with a five-acre demo plot last year ahead of the October-December rainy season.

"Whenever drought strikes and herders migrate, we bear the brunt since we are left with no means to feed our children," Ms Lengila narrates, explaining the drive behind their tiresome efforts of combating desertification on lands whose production capacity has been waning.

According to Kalama Conservancy Coordinator Benson Lalukai, the 2022/2023 drought claimed 90 per cent of cattle and 40 per cent of small ruminants (sheep and goats) in Samburu East, leaving women and children vulnerable. The reseeding programme is a coping mechanism against the adverse effects of climate change.

The land reclamation project is being carried out by Nema in partnership with Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

After the grass matures, women harvest seeds for sale to be supplied to other affected regions.

"During the last rainy season, we collected 150 bags of 90kg grass seeds from women involved in this project. We normally give them a token in form of foodstuffs to carry home and other times we compensate them at a rate of Sh3,000 per bag of seeds harvested," says Ms Dorcas Lolngojine, an NRT officer in charge of community conservancies within Samburu County.

Ms Lolngojine notes that the community-led environmental restoration programme at Kalama started in 2019 with women on the frontline. Their efforts have brought extra benefits for the entire community through cash from carbon credits.

"Kalama is one of the 22 conservancies under the NRT's carbon credit scheme and it has received close to Sh40 million annually from selling soil carbon in the last three years," she explains, adding that the green grass helps in trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to store it in the soil.

This model of land restoration has also been expanded to parts of Laikipia County occupied by pastoralists. During this year's World Desertification and Drought Day celebrations in Ol Kinyei village within Maiyanat Conservancy, Environment, Climate Change and Forestry CS Soipan Tuya acknowledged that invasive species are now a significant cause of desertification and applauded the local community for rehabilitating some 200 acres of previously bare land in the past one year.

Ms Tuya announced that the government is developing a new policy to eradicate invasive plants, including opuntia stricta, acacia reficiens, ipomoea hildebrandtii , and prosopis juliflora, commonly known as the mathenge tree.

She said the Ministry of Environment's 2016 Land Degradation Assessment Report, the most comprehensive study so far, provided that about 91 per cent of Kenya was experiencing some form of land degradation, with about 64 per cent experiencing high degradation and 27 per cent experiencing severe degradation.

Kenya is an ASAL country, where 80 per cent of the land is either arid or semi-arid, with the Nema warning that the country is at a great risk of losing 60 to 70 per cent of land to desertification in coming years.

"We are losing 100 acres of land annually due to desertification and land degradation. Without concerted effort to reclaim the land, we will lose more acres in the coming days," cautions Nema Director General Mamo B Mamo.

He explains that desertification occurs when the environment becomes very dry and cannot support many living organisms, adding that in areas affected by desertification, drought is more severe.

The Nature Conservancy notes that poor land management and poor land use planning are two major causes of land degradation besides climate change.

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