The regreening initiative in South Eastern Kenya is a transformative environmental project aimed at restoring degraded landscapes, improving biodiversity, and enhancing community resilience against climate change. This project focuses on constructing bunds—earth embankments designed to control soil erosion and manage water runoff—while promoting sustainable land management practices.
One third of the world’s soil is degraded and estimates warn that this number could rise to 90% by 2050.
The Plant Wild video below tells an amazing story of the challenges, efforts and solutions to regreen some of the world’s most distressed land.
Background
Kenya faces significant environmental challenges, including deforestation, soil degradation, and declining agricultural productivity. These issues have been exacerbated by climate change, which has led to erratic weather patterns and prolonged droughts. Traditional farming practices, combined with population pressures, have further strained the land.
In response, a Justdiggit initiative seeks to tackle these problems by combining innovative agricultural techniques with community engagement.
Objectives
The Justdiggit initiative has several key objectives:
- Soil Conservation: By constructing bunds, the initiative aims to reduce soil erosion and retain moisture in the soil. This is crucial for improving agricultural yields, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions where water scarcity is a major concern.
- Biodiversity Enhancement: The project promotes the planting of native trees and vegetation alongside bunds, which helps restore natural habitats and increases biodiversity. Healthy ecosystems can better withstand climate impacts and provide essential resources for local communities.
- Community Resilience: By improving soil health and increasing agricultural productivity, the initiative aims to enhance the resilience of communities to climate shocks. This is particularly important in rural areas where agriculture is the primary source of livelihood.
- Sustainable Land Management: The project promotes sustainable agricultural practices, including agroforestry and organic farming. Educating farmers about these practices helps reduce reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which can further degrade the environment.
Challenges
It is counterintuitive to think of dry, arid soil not absorbing water. However, such degraded soil forms a hard top layer that prevents water from being absorbed. As droughts increase due to climate change, the ever-declining rain water is lost as it simply washes over the crusty dirt and is lost without providing any benefit to the ecosystem.
Hydrophobic
Substances, in this case soil, that actively repel water.
Implementation
Justdigit is an international organization that has been restoring land in Africa for the last 15 years. Representative Landscape Coordinators work closely with local communities to engage and educate on digging semi-circular pits called bunds.
Using a simple level tool and a string, the direction of water-flow is noted. Then a 5-meter semi-circle is dug with the high part positioned at the bottom of the natural slope to arrest rain water and encourage it into the ground. The semi-circle bunds are affectionately referred to as “earth smiles”. Native seeds are added to the bund to help things along.
According to Planet Wild, it is estimated that this initiative will retain 2 billion litres (~500 million gallons) of water over the next 20 years.
Impact
Within four years of the seeds sprouting in the bunds; beneficial organisms start to flourish in the dirt, providing nutrients to new vegetation that prevents erosion, lowers temperature, and increases humidity.
As communities continue to engage in this initiative, there is hope that it will not only enhance agricultural productivity but also foster a deeper understanding of the importance of sustainable land management practices. With continued support and collaboration, the bund projects can play a vital role in creating a more sustainable and resilient future for Kenya’s rural landscapes.
Notes:
Please visit justdiggit.org for more information on this resilience project. Their home page has a very cool slider that shows the before/after of the bund practice.
Also, planetwild.com is doing such good work. They host regular mission-funding campaigns and could use your support.