With the need to conserve the environment, calls from various quotas have been made for growing trees in the villages.
A visit to the hilly terrains of Igoji West, South Imenti in Meru County, we end up in Kiamweri and Mukaragatine villages.
A beautiful scenery from the top of every view point welcomes us, with well maintained tea plantations and unique homesteads complementing the refreshing breeze from the neighboring Mt Kenya forest.
All this, symbolizing an area that poverty would never dare approach.
At Kiamweri primary school, we meet Lawrence Mwiti Muthamia who has been shaping the young in primary schools on the importance of tree planting and environment management.
From afar not in his usual office suit, he looks like an ordinary villager, or someone could mistake him for a teacher. But to your surprise, he is the director of economic planning in the state department of forestry.
Despite his high profile in the government, having been brought up in this village and his frequent visits, he relates well with the locals and especially the young learners who look upon him as their role model.
In our interactions, the passionate and dedicated environmentalist tells us that it’s not about the push from the government on tree planting that keeps him focused on environment conservation, but it’s a calling to him.
He narrates to us that having been brought up here, he feels the urge to nurture the young ones in ensuring the environment at the footstep of Mt Kenya is conserved.
“You need to become the champions in this world and in this country so that we bring peace. This will only be possible through climate change mitigation systems like tree planting and environment conservation. You can remember how this place used to be beautiful when we were young and we don’t want to destroy this” said Muthamia pointing at the neighboring indigenous forest.
“We need to sustain this ecosystem because of our future. Trees are the centre stage of our lives, be it furniture, food, shade, nutrition, medicinal or carbon credit. We feel that our people must be champions of this and that’s why we have to mentor these young ones” he added.
He noted that his focus is to make the area a model village in tree planting, saying that through promotion of fruit tree growing would realize establishment of industries thus creating employment.
“Families are the basic units of a society, and that is where we want to encourage fruit trees and improve forest cover. Through private forests we can take good care of the trees” he said.
Muthamia further recommends that environmental studies also be introduced in schools so as to ensure sustainable management of nature.
“These conservation values need to be impacted into our young ones as they are the future of this world. Having been taught on how to plant trees at the family level, introduction of environmental studies in schools can stamp the importance of environment conservation at their early age and into the future” he said.
Muthamia also added that,”We need to establish model nurseries for tree growing. In this area, we have about 26 schools that we will be setting up nurseries where people can learn on trees growing”.
Across the country the government targets planting 15 billion trees to cover about 10.6 million hectares that have been identified as degraded, and which mainly fall under private land.
