Kenya Must Make Its Public Water Towers Plantation-Free and Restore Them to Indigenous Forests
Amid the growing uproar over logging in Kenya’s public forests, it is time we asked ourselves a more fundamental question: Should the responsibility of supplying the country’s timber industry rest with an agency whose primary mandate is to protect and conserve our public forests? More importantly, do we genuinely need commercial timber plantations within our precious water towers? According to the Kenya Forest Service (KFS), approximately six per cent of Kenya’s public forest estate is designated for industrial plantation forestry. Yet Kenya’s total public forest estate stands at approximately 2.602 million hectares. These figures should prompt a serious national conversation about whether commercial timber production belongs within our already pressured public forest ecosystems.
The concern becomes even more urgent when we consider that estimates put Kenya’s natural indigenous closed-canopy forests at approximately 1.24 million hectares, equivalent to roughly two per cent of the country’s land area. For a country with a population of approximately 56.91 million people, this is an incredibly limited natural resource. Rather than continually debating how much timber we can extract from public forests, our priority should be how to expand and protect the remaining indigenous forest cover. One practical starting point is to rethink the management of our public forests designated as water towers. These forests should progressively become 100 per cent plantation-free, with indigenous trees forming the entire forest cover. Their primary purpose must be water security, biodiversity conservation, climate regulation and ecological restoration. We cannot continue treating critical water catchments as commercial timber production zones.
This is not an argument against timber production or the thousands of Kenyans whose livelihoods depend on the timber industry. It is an argument for separating commercial production from conservation responsibilities. Private landowners, farmers, cooperatives and commercial investors can establish sustainable timber plantations on suitable land outside critical water catchments. Government should support this transition through affordable financing, quality seedlings, extension services and reliable markets. There is another dimension that deserves serious attention. On 28 October 2024, President William Ruto announced that, from 2025, KFS would be expected to finance its operations through internally generated revenue rather than relying on the National Treasury. He cited the approximately KSh 4.7 billion generated by the Service against government support of KSh 280 million in the preceding year.
While financial sustainability is a legitimate institutional objective, this directive carried significant risks for forest conservation. Kenya is pursuing an ambitious target of achieving 30 per cent tree cover by 2032 through the 15 billion tree growing initiative. KFS is central to achieving this ambition. Requiring the agency to finance its operations through internally generated revenue creates pressure to identify commercial activities that can sustain its operations. Commercial plantations and timber harvesting are among the potential revenue sources. This raises a fundamental concern about whether conservation priorities could become secondary to revenue generation.
We must recognise that the economic value of a protected water tower cannot be measured by the timber revenue it generates. Its contribution to water security, agricultural productivity, biodiversity, climate regulation and livelihoods is far greater. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, the five major water towers provide approximately 75 per cent of Kenya’s freshwater. KFS should therefore be among the most adequately funded public institutions in the country. Protecting forests is a national investment, not a commercial undertaking that the responsible agency should be expected to finance through exploiting the resource it is mandated to conserve. Water is life and we cannot be casual about our national priorities.
Of course, transitioning existing plantations requires proper planning, including safeguards for workers, timber processors and communities that depend on the industry. However, economic dependence on an existing model should not prevent us from adopting a more sustainable approach. Ultimately, Kenya must move beyond the narrow debate about whether logging should be allowed or prohibited. We must decide what our public forests, particularly our water towers, are meant to serve. Our natural forests cannot simply be manufactured or replaced once destroyed. Timber, on the other hand, can be grown on private land.
We cannot afford to gamble with the little natural forest we have left. Our water towers must produce water, sustain biodiversity and secure our future. Timber production should increasingly be the responsibility of a properly supported private forestry sector, not the price we pay for protecting our public forests.
Job Mwangi is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and the Advocacy Manager at the Green Belt Movement.
