13 år sedan
F4D evaluates African forest projects
Global Challenge’s Forestry for Development has over the previous week met with local forestry stakeholders in Kenya and Tanzania, with the aim of identifying sustainable forestry projects with commercial viability. One such field visit took place with The Green Belt Movement’s forest project in Aberdares, Kenya.
The Green Belt Movement protects forests in Aberdares and is funded through the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which has only on a handful of occasions been used for forest protection purposes. The political unrest that prevails in Kenya since the general elections a few years back, in combination with severe drought, has held back the project: the trees are still very small and the climate benefits have as of yet been so limited that having them verified in order to obtain emission rights has not been warranted.
Eight self-help collection centers have been established on the slopes of Mount Kenya, where small-scale farmers can deposit seeds from e.g. the croton tree and the castor oil plant, which are then converted to biodiesel in a factory with a capacity for processing seven metric tons of seeds a day. The biodiesel is then sold to local bus, truck and tractor drivers. The profit margin is fairly good: a liter of diesel is sold at roughly twice the unit production cost. “In just the brief time I was there, two prospective investors had time to show up, both considering what sort of investment might be needed to increase production ten-fold,” recounts F4D project manager Mattias Goldmann.
