Kenyan president suspends moratorium on logging

The president of KenyaWilliam Ruto, announced this Sunday the suspension of the moratorium on logging in force in the country, which dated back almost six years, despite the concern expressed by environmental associations.

Ruto affirmed that the decision, “awaited for a long time”, seeks to create jobs and develop the sectors of the economy that depend on forest products.

“We cannot have mature trees rotting in the forests while the inhabitants suffer from a shortage of wood. It’s crazy.” declared the president during a religious service in Molo, some 200 km northwest of Nairobi, the capital.

“For this reason, we have decided to open the forest and collect wood, to create jobs for our young people and open companies,” he added.

Ruto, who has positioned himself at the forefront of his continent in matters of the fight against climate change, assured that the government maintains its objective of planting 15,000 million trees in the next ten years.

The ban was imposed by the previous government, in February 2018, in public and community forests, to eradicate endemic illegal logging and increase the country’s forest area by 10%.

For Greenpeace Africa, the suspension of the moratorium could have “catastrophic environmental consequences”.

“In Kenya, the forests are home to rare and threatened species, and millions of people depend on these forests for their subsistence, to feed themselves and to heal themselves,” the NGO warned last month, in the framework of a petition launched against the government initiative.

“Since the Kenyan government imposed a logging ban six years ago, there has been significant progress in protecting forests and in combating the climate crisis,” the organization added.

In 2022, logging contributed 1.6% to Kenya’s GDP, where forests covered 8.8% of the land, according to government statistics.

Prepared with information from AFP