News

This piece is an excerpt from an article published in Imaging Notes Magazine and was written by GBM staff Peter Ndunda. For the full article visit Imaging Notes Magazine’s website.

In 2007, GBM set up a state-of-the-art GIS lab facility that enables the organization 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 communit

y 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 R

aster 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.