2023-07-02 21:30:17
It is a decision that worries environmental associations. Kenyan President William Ruto on Sunday (July 2nd) announced the lifting of the ban on logging, which dated back more than five years, during a religious service in Molo, located about 200 kilometers to the northwest Nairobi, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). A decision “long awaited”he assured.
“We cannot have mature trees rotting in the forests while the inhabitants suffer from the lack of wood. This is madnesssaid the president. That is why we decided to open the forest and harvest wood, in order to create jobs for our young people and open businesses”, he added, according to AFP. William Ruto also assured that the state was maintaining its goal of planting 15 billion trees over the next 10 years.
The lifting of the ban could rejoice the sectors of the sawmills and the trade of wood which regretted that the moratorium had caused many job losses. It had been imposed by the previous government in February 2018 in public and community forests, to eradicate endemic illegal logging and increase the country’s forest cover to 10% against 7%, when the moratorium was put in place there. is over five years old.
Risk of “catastrophic environmental consequences”
“In Kenya, forests are home to rare and endangered species, and millions of people depend on these forests for their livelihoods, food and medicine”alerted Greenpeace Africa last month, as part of a petition launched against this levy which risks having “catastrophic environmental consequences”deplores the NGO.
“Since the Kenyan government imposed a logging ban six years ago, significant progress has been made in protecting forests and tackling the climate crisis”she added.
“Removing the ban will undo all our hard work, as it will open the floodgates to commercial and illegal logging, driven solely by profit”, predicts the NGO. Logging contributed 1.6% of Kenya’s gross domestic product in 2022, where forests covered 8.8% of the territory, according to government statistics.
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