AFP, published Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 8:20 p.m.
Kenyan President William Ruto on Sunday announced the lifting of a nearly six-year-old logging ban, despite concerns from environmental groups.
Ruto said the “long-awaited” decision aims to create jobs and develop industries dependent on forest products.
“We cannot allow old trees in the forest to rot while people suffer from a lack of wood. This is madness,” the President said at a service in Molo, a town about 200 kilometers northwest of the capital Nairobi.
“That’s why we decided to open the forest and harvest wood to create jobs for our young people and open businesses,” he added.
Mr Ruto, who has positioned himself at the forefront of Africa’s efforts to tackle climate change, gave assurances that the government is sticking to its goal of planting 15 billion trees over the next decade.
The lifting of the ban will please the sawmill and lumber trade industries, which lamented that many jobs would be lost as a result.
The moratorium was imposed by the previous government in February 2018 on public and municipal forests to eradicate endemic illegal logging and increase the country’s forest cover to 10%.
For Greenpeace Africa there is a risk that the repeal will have “catastrophic consequences for the environment”.
“In Kenya, forests are home to rare and endangered species, and millions of people depend on these forests for their livelihood, food and medicine,” the NGO warned last month in a petition filed against the increase.
“Since the Kenyan government imposed the logging ban six years ago, significant progress has been made in protecting forests and tackling the climate crisis,” she added.
“The lifting of the ban will undo all our hard work as it opens the floodgates to commercial and illegal logging purely for profit,” the NGO said.
According to government statistics, logging contributed 1.6% to Kenya’s GDP in 2022, where forests covered 8.8% of the territory.