Green Belt Movement:
Environmental Conservation in Africa

chillibreeze writer — Anjana Mahanta

 
Formed on June 5, 1977, World Environment Day, the Green Belt Movement (GBM) is a community based developmental and environmental organisation focused on social mobilization and empowerment that was achieved by organising thousands of women groups. These groups established nurseries, planted indigenous trees on their farms, public lands and forests to prevent soil erosion and to protect, rehabilitate and conserve the environment (GBM annual report, 2003). Set up with multiple development objectives on the agenda, the main activity of the movement is centered on the nationwide grass root tree planting campaign.

The movement is wholly managed by the Kenyans and it deliberately prefers to rely on local capacity, knowledge, wisdom and expertise wherever appropriate (Mathai, p-6). The tree-planting movement, led mostly by women, aims to produce firewood, building materials, and also to slow down desertification. It also works for women's rights, democracy and peace. The movement rallied underprivileged, economically deprived rural women to plant millions of trees to reverse the rampant deforestation of Kenya by a corrupt government. In the process, the women not only acquired fuel, food, shelter which they desperately needed, but they also earned a small fee paid by the Green Belt Movement (GBM) for every seedling that flourished. In nearly three decades, the Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees and provided jobs for over 100,000 people, most of them again, women (Winfrey, 2005).

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The Green Belt Movement stands for the cause of biodiversity conservation and community empowerment. Since its beginnings, the movement has worked with more than one million children in 3,000 schools to plant trees on school compounds, got more than 50,000 households and small-scale farmers to plant trees on their farms, and produced numerous booklets and films on reforestation issues. The GBM persuaded the local administration to donate a 0.3-acre plot and acquired 8,000 seedlings of various species to begin with and by 1989 they were handling 35,000 seedlings a year. The seedlings are sold to local farmers, schools or local officials and are also planted on public land (Jiggins, p.98). In the last ten years, more than seven million trees are recorded as having been planted and having survived. More than 50,000 Kenyan women have been involved in the campaign (UNEP, 2005).

Dr. Mathai’s first initiative was the formation of a company named Envirocare Ltd, which was based in the Lang’ata constituency in Kenya. The primary objective of the company was to clean the homesteads of the residents of Lang’ata, and to plant trees wherever necessary. Local people were mobilised for this task, though the response initially was partial. Most of the people who were hired to work were too poor, and so, monetary compensation for work including transportation cost was expected to be borne by the company, which was yet to become financially self sufficient. With such financial liabilities, the company’s take-off stage was fraught with difficulties (Mathai, p.12).

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In 1975, a sincere effort was made to promote Envirocare to potential clients through the “international show”, a forum for showcasing and promoting agricultural and economic goods for local and international clientele. But due to the unorganised nature of the company, which till then did not have any physical address or any specific seedling site, the orders generated for seedling during the show could not be processed in a professional way. Only the mailing address could be provided for procurement of seedlings. For obvious reason, these people never contacted Envirocare again. The most formidable drawback faced by Envirocare was the resource crunch. The resource that the company had was just enough to stay functional. The company as such had poor support for the cause it upheld so earnestly. The gradual disassociation of several close associates from the company’s activities dealt the final blow. As a result the activity of Envirocare came to a standstill and the company eventually withered away (Mathai, P.14).

In Sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly in places like Nyeri, malnutrition was an ever growing phenomenon. One cause leading to this situation was extensive cultivation of cash crops like coffee and tea at the expense of indigenous products such as yam, sweet potato, arrowroot etc. The farmers envisaged a handsome return from cash crops, which was expected to meet their daily needs as well as other contingencies. However, due to several anomalies both at the government and local committee levels, most of the farmers got meagre amounts in return, which were insufficient to meet even their basic needs. The consequent malnutrition at the household level led to mass discontentment and disillusionment amongst the farmers. Another noteworthy point for the prevalence of malnutrition was the mismatch between demand for and supply of fuel wood. With an increasing scarcity of fuel wood, people began substituting their meals with diets that required use of less fuel, irrespective of their nutritional value (Mathai, p.18)

The GBM under its food security program encouraged villagers to plant local fruit bearing trees and indigenous food crops such as yams, arrowroots, cassava, sugarcane and bananas, which could be used for household consumptions as supplements to the otherwise poor diet. Generally in the rural areas cash crops such as tea and coffee, and horticultural crops such as exotic fruits, French beans and commercial flower nurseries used to dominate the agriculture. The issue of malnutrition was thus addressed by GBM through the planting of more indigenous crops. Villagers were provided with seeds and stocks of indigenous crops to propagate these in their farms (GBM special report, 2003).

Mathai’s tree planting work soon encompassed the spheres of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, socio-economic upliftment and women empowerment. Women of Nyeri are known for their role in managing their households, right from collecting fuel wood to feeding their families. Most of the households in Nyeri did not have enough firewood, nor did they have enough food for their children, which had made malnutrition a common sight in that part of Kenya. Soon Mathai carried out an awareness campaign for the marginally poor women population of Nyeri to empower them about the usefulness of planting indigenous fruit trees to supplement the inferior diet and also to educate them about the nutritional benefits of indigenous plants.

The first step towards this plantation drive was to set up a nursery. The local foresters, did impart training to the village women upon request from the campaigners, but the training was too academically oriented for the semi-literate village women to comprehend. However, the women, realising the importance of the whole campaign, soon began to show their inventive spirit and started the nursery in the most unconventional manner; so much so that at some point the foresters accused them of tarnishing their profession. Unperturbed, they relentlessly pursued their work with single minded zeal. Undeterred by the capital crunch, they used broken pots and pans for preparing seedbeds and learned to observe the flowering cycles of the plants, knowledge of which was crucial for harvesting of seeds. Slowly and with perseverance, they learnt most of the things about seedlings and tree planting, which is normally acquired only through a professional forester’s diploma. The foresters were not too enthusiastic to help them out initially, and did not embark on follow-up work to check the survival rate of the seedlings distributed. But gradually, with the success of the plantation drive, follow-up work was undertaken. The once reluctant foresters soon came forward to lend their supporting hands to these self reliant tree nursery specialists (Mathai, p-26).

The GBM is mainly associated with women’s groups registered with the government for carrying out social and developmental activities. Lately, the original 6,000 groups have organised themselves into 600 networks (GBM annual report, 2003). Most of the women working for GBM are farmers, and during the course of their involvement, they have acquired skills in intensive land management and organic farming practice. There were enough incentives to sustain the movement in the form of accessibility to farming tools and equipments and financial compensation for every tree seedling that survived. Although the benefit of tree planting was not visible in the short run, the long term benefits accrued were well worth the wait, because the community can enjoy fresh air, wood products, better micro-climate, cleaner water, sustained land productivity, improved livelihood and better health (GBM report, 2003).

Through the Green Belt Movement thousands of women were mobilised and empowered to take action and effect change. The semi-literate women, who were earlier never given a chance to participate in the decision making process, showed changes in their attitudes, becoming fearless and bold and moved to defend their democratic rights. The Women for Change Program initiated by GBM conduct workshops to impart skills on food security, post harvest food processing, packaging, marketing, tree planting and bee keeping.

The Green Belt Movement is pioneering a community based rehabilitation initiative of planting indigenous trees in degraded forest areas. Work under this scheme has been undertaken in areas such as Mt. Kenya, Aberdare catchment areas, Bungoma and highly cultivated marginal areas such as Machakos. This rehabilitation initiative is considered important because against the recommended forest cover of 10%, Kenya used to have a meagre 1.7% (GBM annual report, 2003).

During the course of its 30 years existence, the GBM, with undeterred spirit, planted over 30 million trees, especially on private farms, created employment for poor people, and increased environmental awareness for the masses in general and women in particular. It also mobilised over 100,000 women to form tree nurseries, exposed the encroachment by non-resident cultivators on the Aberdare forest, saving recreational open spaces like Uhuru Park, Karura forest and Jivanjee gardens from land grabbers. Simultaneously the movement under its auspices carried out umbrella projects in the spheres of civil and environmental education, advocacy and networking, harvesting of rainwater, green belt safaris, food security, HIV & AIDS prevention, capacity building and a Pan African outreach for the development of a society of greens (GBM report, 2003).

Dr. Wangari Mathai’s Green Belt Movement is a unique example of the success of sustainable initiative and development efforts at the grass root level through community empowerment for self determination, justice, equity, reduction of poverty, and environmental conservation, using trees as an entry as well as a focal point. Global environmental initiatives can learn a lot from the GBM experience, particularly how women can be a critical partner in the sustainability movement by not only effectively meeting their current needs but also making the future of their children secure for years to come.

References

GBM (2003). Special Annual Report, The Green Belt Movement, retrieved from the website:www.greenbeltmovement.org as on 28th March 2006.

Jiggins, J (1994). Changing the Boundaries, Island Press, P.98.

Mathai, W (1985). The Green Belt Movement: sharing the approach and the experience, Lantern Books, New York.

Walubengo, D (2002). Food security and sustainable natural resources management in Kenya, Forest Action Network, Kenya.

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