KERA will address six primary barriers to large-scale ecosystem restoration by catalyzing a nationwide community-based movement for nature that promotes and implements ecosystem restoration at scale.
These barriers relate to public awareness, political will, legislative and policy environments, technical capacity, finance, and scientific research.
Barrier 1 - Public awareness: There is a great lack of awareness of drivers of landscape degradation, the negative effects that ecosystem degradation is having on the well-being and livelihoods of millions of Kenyans, the financial costs of this degradation, and the profound societal benefits that would come from major investments in ecosystem restoration.
Barrier 2 - Political Will: Despite the economic benefits that restoration investments would bring Kenya’s societies, the persuasions of, pressures on and limited collaborations amongst decision-makers in public and private sector to invest in long-term ecosystem restoration initiatives is relatively small compared with the persuasions, collaborations and/or pressures to invest in other sectors like health care, manufacturing, education, and defence.
Barrier 3 – Legislative and policy environments: There is a scarcity of legislation, policies, regulations, tax incentives and subsidies that incentivise a shift in investments towards large scale restoration and production systems, value chains and infrastructure that do not degrade ecosystems.
Barrier 4 – Technical capacity: The county governments; local NGOs, community based organizations, small-scale community enterprises, and private companies possess limited technical knowledge and capacity to design and implement large-scale restoration initiatives.
Barrier 5 – Finance: There is a lack of finance to invest in large scale restoration because of the perceived and/or real risks involved in such investments and limited awareness on the economic benefits of ecosystem restoration to the investors, government and host communities.
Barrier 6 – Scientific Research: Limited investment in long-term research, including social as well as natural sciences, that focuses on innovation to improve restoration protocols through time, is a barrier to progress.
1. To achieve meaningful partnerships in implementing restoration initiatives in liaison with the local, national, regional and global development partners drawn across the civil society sector/not-for-profit sector , public sector, and public sector working together in the context that fits into respective local systems. Ecosystem and ecological restoration is an engaging, patient and inclusive process that needs interrelationships between nature and culture, engages all sectors of society, and enables full and effective participation of indigenous, local and disenfranchised communities.
2. To integrate sustainable livelihood programme with ecosystem restoration initiatives that provide the landowners with sustainable source of livelihoods while participating in ecosystem restoration programmes back- to- back.
3. To invest in knowledge and technology transfer programme through the establishment of a network of Communities of Practice (CoPs). One of the CoPs will compose of farmer- to- farmer trainers per village who collectively address the challenges posed by the continued productive use of degraded lands through implementation of climate smart innovations. Furthermore, they will be linked to the government extension officers posted to each devolved administrative unit.
4. To initiate farmer-led restoration of degraded ecosystems through the adoption of circular economy- based approaches on selected degraded privately- owned lands and publicly owned lands (community-owned and government-owned lands). In liaison with the National Land Commission and the County Governments, corporate/private sector entities will be encouraged to sponsor restoration projects in the public and community owned lands as part of their corporate social responsibility and as a strategy for offsetting their carbon footprints.
5. To undertake community-leveled forest and landscape restoration at scale by promoting an aggressive restoration program that builds resilience, reduces vulnerability and increases the ability of local systems to adapt to daily threats and extreme events. We spearhead this boldness through village championship approach, multi-stakeholder partnership, and broad-based alliance of several community-based actors from all corners of the country.
6. To adopt an integrated multidisciplinary approach that integrates existing knowledge and practice while bridging the gap between research/science and practice. KERA utilizes all forms of knowledge in designing, implementing and monitoring restoration of her projects and programs. At the same time using lessons learned, mistakes appreciated and wisdom acquired from practical experiences in determining and prioritizing the scientific needs of the ecosystem restoration as an emerging vibrant sector and field.
7. To forge close working relationship across science - practice - policy interface as deep working relationship amongst the three communities of practice is key to successful ecosystem restoration at scale. Ecosystem and ecological restoration is policy-relevant and critically important tool for realizing biodiversity conservation, attaining climate change mitigation and adaptation, improving ecosystem services, actualizing sustainable socio-economic development, and enhancing human health and well-being.
8. To adopt the use of evidence-based programming approaches to increase efficiency and effectiveness. KERA projects and programmes appreciate that ecosystem restoration is a relatively new discipline in conservation biology. We are designing new and adopting existing good practices to close the knowledge-action gap to implement evidence-based conservation and effective landscape recovery. Besides other innovative models, technologies and practices, KERA is using the Conservation Excellence Model (CEM) to evaluate its programmes with keen focus on biodiversity hotspots.
9. To promote livelihood incentives to inspire people and communities to engage in ecological and ecosystem restoration. These variety of incentive mechanisms target land holders, land users, nature-positive small-scale community enterprises, local CSO groups, producer and marketing cooperative societies, county governments and county assemblies aiming at promoting forest and landscape restoration, outcomes, and the biophysical and socio-economic factors that influence implementation and programme success.
KERA is adopting both financial incentives and non-financial incentive forms of institutional support by designing place-based Incentives for Ecosystem Services (IES) which are context-specific packages of measures that aim to support smallholder farmers in the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices that will benefit the environment, and improve long-term food security.
10. To adopt climate resilient value chains and the practice of “leave no one behind”. KERA is investing in adaptation interventions to widen livelihood options and develop more resilient livelihoods to ensure vulnerable communities are able to cope with the impacts of climate change and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. We appreciate the fact that a failure to adopt climate resilient measures to support sustainable livelihoods is likely to jeopardize food and income security, and lead to the loss of assets and increasing impoverishment.
For effective climate resilient value-chain development, we embrace holistic and integrated approaches encompassing various interventions which are more successful as they tend to reinforce one another through village championship approach. We model multi-stakeholder platforms that foster commercial, technical, and institutional innovation and have more significant and lasting impacts. We apply information technology to reduce asymmetries in market information that have traditionally put rural farmers at a disadvantage compared to downstream market actors.