The Green Belt Movement

From Maps to Healthy Ecosystems

Fig. 1

Community members working on their tree nurseries. GBM supports more than 4000 community tree nurseries across Kenya that raise and care for more than 8 million seedlings annually. Image courtesy of ManoocherUSAID.

Fig. 2

A woman putting soil in a potting bag in preparation for growing a seedling. Image courtesy of ManoocherUSAID.

Fig. 3

GBM community tree nursery in Nyeri constituency, Kenya.

Fig. 4

Using GBM’s watershed-based approach to conservation, GBM works with grassroots communities to identify and prioritize critical watersheds that require immediate restoration. In the Aberdares alone, GBM is working with the local communities to restore 7 priority watersheds that produce most of the water for Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya and form the catchment of the river Athi and river Tana - Kenya’s largest river that plays an integral role in the economy of the country.

Fig. 5

GeoEye imagery for 2011 showing the Gakanga planting site, and the status of a community reforestation area in Zaina forest in the Aberdares ecosystem. With financial support from USAID, The Green Belt Movement has been working since 2009 with the grassroots communities to plant trees that will restore this critical water catchment area. GBM uses satellite imagery to monitor the growth of these young trees and the progress of the restoration work on the ground. So far, more than 60 springs of water have been revived and protected in this area that forms the water catchment for Zaina and Chania rivers, which are part of the headwaters of the Tana River – the largest river and the most important river 4 for economic growth of Kenya.

In Memory of Wangari Maathai

This article is in memory of Professor Wangari Muta Maathai (1940–2011): Nobel Peace Laureate, environmentalist, scientist, parliamentarian, founder of the Green Belt Movement, and advocate for social justice, human rights and democracy.

Professor Wangari Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the Central Highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. In 1971, she became the first woman to receive a PhD in East and Central Africa, thereafter the first woman to chair a department at the University of Nairobi, and the first to be appointed an associate Professor.

In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement to address the needs of the grassroots communities and for environmental conservation. Today, the Green Belt Movement has supported grassroots communities in planting more than 50 million trees, restoring thousands of hectares of degraded land and improving the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of local communities.

She was a globally recognized champion for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. In 2004, Professor Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for her work in sustainable development, democracy, and peace – the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive this prestigious honor. In 2009, the United Nations Secretary General, in recognition of her deep commitment to the environment, named Professor Maathai a UN Messenger of Peace, with a special focus on the environment and climate change. She was also the Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Forest Basin and a founding member of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

Prof. Maathai died on Sept. 25, 2011, at the age of 71. As she used to remind the world, “we must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist,” her legacy will continue to stand as an example to all of us to persist in our pursuit of progress. The Green Belt Movement is determined to build upon Professor Maathai’s desire to create a values-driven society of people who consciously work for continued improvement of their livelihoods and a greener, cleaner world.

Founded by the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate Prof. Wangari Maathai in 1977, the Green Belt Movement (GBM) works at the grassroots to promote environmental conservation, empower communities, and foster sustainable livelihoods. Over the decades, the organization that was founded to respond to the needs of rural Kenyan women – who reported that their streams were drying up, their food supply was threatened and fire wood resources were quickly diminishing – has mobilized communities to plant over 50 million trees across Kenya. By so doing, thousands of hectares of degraded forest land and water catchments have been restored, soil erosion controlled on the community farms and the livelihoods of thousands of local women have been improved.

In spite of 35 years of achievement, environmental conservation and socio-economic development are still enormous challenges in Kenya and throughout Africa. For Kenya to achieve sustainable development, the country needs to have at least 10% forest cover so as to provide all vital services – water resources for the population, electrical power generation, agriculture, wildlife and tourism – that are supplied by this important and yet fragile ecosystem. Today the figure is about 2% closed canopy forest cover.

To increase the forest cover and scale up the impact of the community work on the ground required GBM to develop a landscape scale approach to planning, monitoring and analysis. GBM’s experience shows that GIS and remote sensing provide useful tools to develop this capacity and satellite imagery is a critical component for our work.

Introduction of GIS and Remote Sensing at GBM

In 2007, GBM set up a state-of-the-art GIS lab facility that enables the organ-ization to cope with increasing demand for reliable data from the field for decision making in support of the organization’s watershed-based approach to tree planting, conservation and community development across Kenya. The development of this capacity marked an important milestone for GBM towards scaling up the impact of community work on the ground.

GBM learned that when local communities are empowered and educated to understand their environment, their natural resources, and the linkage between forests and their own livelihoods, they are more likely to take care of and protect these resources. To realize this, GBM deployed more than 70 field extension staff across the country. Through this network of field staff, GBM has been mobilizing and training the communities on environmental conservation, climate change, governance, empowerment and mapping their natural resources through the GBM’s Community Empowerment and Education (CEE) program. The CEE is the community engagement platform upon which all other GBM programs are built. The CEE engages the communities to examine their needs, rights and responsibilities, the links between the environment and poverty, and the challenges that affect them. It also empowers them to develop their own solutions to these problems.

GIS and remote sensing capacity within GBM has provided absolutely critical tools and skills required to carry out analysis on the status of our forests so as to:

1. create awareness across communities in Kenya through the CEEs,
2. identify areas of forest loss that need immediate intervention in the critical watersheds of Kenya, and,
3. explore solutions for restoration and protection of these watersheds.

With the use of high resolution imagery, field-based data and local knowledge, forest maps were developed to assist in the assessment and analysis of forest status in Mt. Kenya, Aberdares and Mau forests in Kenya. The end product of this analysis was a priority list of critical watersheds in Kenya that are highly threatened and need immediate intervention. The maps identified and delineated the extent of these degraded watersheds, creating a portfolio of community tree planting sites for rehabilitation.

As a result, GBM is currently working with the grassroots communities in Kenya to restore these critical watersheds (including Gura, Chania, Turasha, Malewa, among others). They produce most of the water for Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, for Lake Naivasha, and form the catchment of the river Athi and river Tana, Kenya’s largest river that supplies water to hydropower plants, which generate over 50% of Kenya’s total electricity. In addition to the hydrological, economic and biodiversity benefits of these forest restoration efforts, the restoration and protection of these watersheds will go a long way in helping to solve the growing problems of climate change.

For Kenya to positively contribute to global climate change efforts, it is important to adequately address the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation without jeopardizing the livelihoods of the local communities. This can only be achieved if the local communities are well informed to fully and effectively participate in the various Climate Change program processes (including CDM/ Clean Development Mechanism and REDD/Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) so as to ensure that the proposed interventions will continue to improve their livelihoods while also protecting the forests. The maps produced in close collaboration with the communities provide powerful communication tools for stakeholders to facilitate discussions, and build consensus on the communities’ priorities.

At a spatial resolution of 2.5m and .5m, Spot imagery and GeoEye imagery were used by GBM to develop maps that provided the communities with a faithful representation of the reality on the ground. GBM’s experience has been that when integrated with the communities’ knowledge of their local landscape and values, these maps become incredible tools for helping the communities to easily understand the linkage between the state of the environment, their behavior and actions and their livelihoods. It is when the communities fully appreciate this linkage that they stand up and take action to sustainably manage their natural resources. With the aid of such maps, many GBM communities have been able to define their conservation goals, agree on their forest management plans and design their future.

The outcomes of these GBM’s community participatory processes have been remarkable: three community-based Afforestation and Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism (CDM AR) projects in Aberdares and Mt. Kenya have been registered by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), two community-based reforestation and climate change mitigation projects have been initiated in the Maasai Mau forest, among other community development projects across the country.

As GBM rolls out forest restoration work in the identified priority watersheds in Mt. Kenya, Aberdares and Mau forests, we support the communities to carry out an extensive assessment of the numbers of trees required to rehabilitate those areas, the number of seedlings available in the community tree nurseries and the capacity to scale up seedlings’ production to meet the restoration targets.

To achieve this, GBM trained its network of field staff on GPS data collection skills, interpretation of satellite imagery maps, and other field-based data collection techniques, and then mobilized them to train and support the communities to map their tree nurseries. So far, a total of 4,034 community tree nurseries have been mapped across Kenya. These tree nurseries raise and take care of more than 8 million indigenous seedlings annually for planting in these important yet highly threatened watersheds - as well as on their farms, public lands, sites of cultural significance and protected reserves.

As a result of the data collection, an interactive Web map was developed using Esri’s ArcGIS Server so as to share this information with the communities and other project stakeholders. The maps show the location of these community tree nurseries, the name of the community group that takes care of the tree nursery, their seedlings’ production capacity and the number of participating households in the nursery group.

This location-specific information on tree nurseries has been invaluable in the process of scaling up GBM’s work at the grassroots level. It provides GBM with the ability to assess the availability and distribution of indigenous seedlings required to meet the re-afforestation needs in the critical watersheds in the country. With the help of this information, GBM is able to direct investments towards scaling up seedlings production in areas with identified gaps.

As we continue to work with the communities to plant trees in these critical watersheds, it is important for GBM to be able to monitor the growth of the trees, the change in forest cover and the impact of the restoration work over time.

To ensure a high survival rate of the planted trees, we closely monitor the progress and growth of the young seedlings on the ground for a minimum period of three years. GBM field staff support the communities to map their tree planting sites using GPS. They delineate the areal extent for each of their tree planting seasons on the landscape, the species and the number of trees planted on the site for periodic monitoring. To enhance integrity of the data submitted from the field, the Monitoring and Evaluation team periodically visits the sites to validate the trees that have been reported being planted. This team uses Trimble data collection devices running Esri’s ArcPad application, which allows them to view satellite imagery and maps of the area, and to access the project’s data while in the field. After the 3rd year, satellite imagery was used to periodically monitor the progress of the trees as they grow to full maturity and become a forest.

Geospatial technology has tremendously increased efficiency and effectiveness in planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting of these GBM-supported community-based projects in Kenya. GBM is deeply grateful to Esri, Astrium’s Planet Action, Trimble, Blue Raster and Exelis (formerly ITT) for their enormous support in the development of this incredible capacity to plan, monitor and measure the impact of conservation efforts in Kenya.

In Memory of Wangari Maathai This article is in memory of Professor Wangari Muta Maathai (1940–2011): Nobel Peace Laureate, environmentalist, scientist, parliamentarian, founder of the Green Belt Movement, nd advocate for social justice human rights and democracy.

Professor Wangari Maathai was born in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the Central Highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940. In 1971, she became the first woman to receive a PhD in East and Central Africa, thereafter the first woman to chair a department at the University of Nairobi, and the first to be appointed an associate Professor.

In 1977, she founded the Green Belt Movement to address the needs of the grassroots communities and for environmental conservation. Today, the Green Belt Movement has supported grassroots communities in planting more than 50 million trees, restoring thousands of hectares of degraded land and improving the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of local communities.

She was a globally recognized champion for democracy, human rights and environmental conservation. In 2004, Professor Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition for her work in sustainable development, democracy, and peace – the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive this prestigious honor. In 2009, the United Nations Secretary General, in recognition of her deep commitment to the environment, named Professor Maathai a UN Messenger of Peace, with a special focus on the environment and climate change. She was also the Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Forest Basin and a founding member of the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

Prof. Maathai died on Sept. 25, 2011, at the age of 71. As she used to remind the world, “we must not tire, we must not give up, we must persist,” her legacy will continue to stand as an example to all of us to persist in our pursuit of progress. The Green Belt Movement is determined to build upon Professor Maathai’s desire to create a values-driven society of people who consciously work for continued improvement of their livelihoods and a greener, cleaner world.