Kenya's president has ended the 6-year ban on logging in the country.
Kenya Lifts Logging Ban, Promising Jobs and Growth | Reason | William Rampe:
July 10, 2023 - "On July 2, Kenya's president ended an almost six-year moratorium on logging in the country's public and community forests. 'We can't have mature trees rotting in forests while locals suffer due to lack of timber. That's foolishness,' President William Ruto explained during a church service. 'This is why we have decided to open up the forest and harvest timber so that we can create jobs for our youth and open up business.'
"In 2018, when he was deputy president, Ruto announced a 90-day ban in order 'to allow reassessment and rationalisation of the entire forest sector.' The government regularly extended the ban as part of an effort to limit illegal logging and prevent the lowering of Kenya's water levels.
"While lifting the ban, Ruto is maintaining Kenya's goal of planting 15 billion trees over the next 10 years. The Kenya Forest Service (KFS) has also set rules for harvesting in gazetted forests, including requiring loggers to acquire entry and exit certificates.
'Some of the areas, in the Great Rift Valley for example, used to be hubs for timber production,' says Lubanga Makanji, who teaches environment and resource development at Egerton University in Kenya. 'And that means that there were wood processors that would provide employment for the local community. As soon as the moratorium came into place, those jobs were lost.' According to the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, the 2018 ban led to the loss of approximately 44,000 jobs and $28 million in revenue, bringing economic collapse to communities that relied on the logging industry.
"Ruto's decision has set off a storm of environmentalist anger, with activists accusing Kenya of favoring economic development over its climate goals. John Kioli, the executive director of the Green Africa Foundation, told the Associated Press that ... lifting the ban would 'undermine all efforts to put Kenya on a low-carbon trajectory.' 'By lifting this ban president Ruto has prioritised profit over people and nature,' said Tracy Makhet of Greenpeace Africa in a press release....
"But the ban is still in effect for indigenous forests. The lifted portion of the ban applies to trees in plantation forests, which should be felled when the trees reach rotation age, Makanji says....'We have a community that is also engaged in tree planting within these gazetted government forests. So to me, there shouldn't be any environmental impact.'
"Furthermore, it's far from clear that the moratorium substantially reduced illegal logging. In a 2004 study, Makanji and Haruyuki Mochida of the University of Tsukuba found that a previous ban did not prevent illegal logging in the Kakamega forest. 'As wood shortage bites, the price of sawn timber has risen hence creating a major incentive for illegal extraction,' explained the authors....
"By bringing property rights to the forest, Kenya could ensure that its trees are both conserved and used depending on the utility they bring to Kenyans, as determined by price signals. A 2000 paper on forest conservation in Kenya's Mt. Elgon National Park, written by Esther Mwangie of Indiana University and Paul Ongugo and Jane Njuguna of the Kenya Forest Research Institute, found that the 'institutional flexibility' of 'according claimant rights to local communities' can 'create incentives that encourage communities to take long term benefits and short term costs into account when making decisions.'"
Read more: https://reason.com/2023/07/10/kenya-lifts-logging-ban-promising-jobs-and-growth/
Pres. Ruto lifts 6-year ban on logging | NTV Kenya | July 2, 2023:
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