The principles for ecosystem restoration underpin all of the KERA restoration activities. The principles are complementary and should be read and considered altogether.
Our programmatic activities aim to contribute to the achievement of the Kenya’s Government Development Plans, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to end poverty, conserve biodiversity, combat climate change and improve livelihoods for everyone, everywhere.
For effectiveness, KERA restoration simultaneously supports achievement of the biodiversity, climate and land-degradation neutrality goals of the Rio Conventions – CBD, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – and allied global initiatives.
KERA equitably and inclusively provide all stakeholders, right-holders, and especially under- represented groups (e.g. local communities, Indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, women, youth and LGBTIQ+ people) with opportunities to be engaged and integrated in meaningful, free and active ways.
We thrive to secure equal and regular access to information and knowledge; recognizing and addressing social asymmetries through empowerment and capacity development of underrepresented groups; seeking free, prior and informed consent; providing effective incentives and improving livelihoods, food security and opportunities for local communities; promoting co-management and ensuring a key role for local communities in decision-making; recognizing rights, needs and concerns; fostering tenure security; pursuing fair and equitable distribution of benefits and responsibilities; and building dialogue, trust and mutual respect through inclusive and transparent governance with mechanisms for impartial conflict resolution.
Our intervention encompasses a wide range of activities, employed singly or collectively, which aim to repair degraded forest and landscape ecosystems. Any KERA activity results in net gain for biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, and human well-being, including sustainable production of goods and services.
KERA major categories of restorative activities include: (1) reduction of negative environmental and societal impacts, such as pollution and unsustainable resource use and management; (2) removal of contaminants, pollutants and other threats, often known as remediation; (3) rehabilitation of ecosystem functions and services in highly modified areas such as former mining sites and degraded production systems; and (4) ecological restoration, which aims to remove degradation and assists in recovering an ecosystem to the trajectory it would be on if degradation had not occurred, accounting for environmental change.
We aim to achieve and sustain the greatest net gain possible across our restoration activities for biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation, and human health and well-being at community, sub-national and national scales.
We aim to enhance and not be a substitute for nature conservation, especially in areas with high ecological integrity and high value for ensuring ecological connectivity, as well as in other priority areas for conservation, including those within the territories of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities.
All restorative activities should concurrently address the direct and indirect causes of ecosystem degradation and fragmentation, and the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services. If the causes are not addressed, restorative activities may fail over the long term. We identify the degree and causes of degradation during the planning phase of restoration projects, programmes or initiatives, developing actions to reduce and mitigate their impacts at the appropriate scale.
These actions include eliminating incentives that directly or indirectly promote ecosystem degradation. We address land uses and property regimes that promote ecosystem degradation and prevent the long-term permanence of restored ecosystems. We equally adopt sustainable practices that enhance biodiversity conservation (including in production systems) and contribute to the mitigation and adaptation to climate change, should be promoted.
KEA Programming activities strive to integrate all types of knowledge – including, but not limited to, Indigenous, traditional, local and scientific ways of knowing – and practices in order to achieve greater kinship with nature, cooperation and effectiveness. This ensures fostering of inclusive and consensual decision-making throughout the process, while enabling full participation of local stakeholders and right-holders.
Our capacity-development efforts are focused on promoting mutual learning, as well as knowledge-sharing among stakeholders and communities of practice at local, sub-national national levels. In particular, we systematically capture and share knowledge about effective practices and innovative approaches to develop, adapt and replicate successful experiences, and to avoid repeating mistakes. This also allow for the identification of knowledge gaps and strategic research and capacity-development priorities.
During the planning phase of restoration projects and programmes, we establish realistic and achievable short-, medium- and long-term ecological, cultural and socio-economic objectives and goals based on a shared vision of desired outcomes.
They include targets and indicators that are measurable against the baseline condition, and that specify the direction (e.g. increase or decrease) and magnitude of change desired, and are time- bound, where appropriate. This inclusion of measurable objectives and goals allow clear communication of expected results, set the basis for co-development of an implementation plan and enable monitoring, evaluation and adaptive management.
KERA restoration activities can be undertaken at any spatial scale, from areas of less than a hectare to large landscapes, the ecological, cultural and socio-economic contexts, at both the local and larger landscape scale, are taken into account throughout the process. Consideration of the local context facilitates alignment of our project objectives and goals with local needs.
Additionally, our restoration agenda depends on adequately addressing land-level factors, including threats from the larger landscape, exchanges of energy and organisms across ecosystem boundaries, ecological and hydrological connectivity, and transboundary effects. KERA use of spatial planning processes will facilitate the tailoring of projects, programmes and initiatives to the larger landscape to maximize net gain for biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, and human well-being, including sustainable production of goods and services.
KERA undertake the monitoring of biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, and human well-being responses to restoration to determine whether objectives and goals are being met. We begin monitoring at the inception of the project, programme or initiative, to allow baseline measurements of relevant site- and landscape-level indicators to be taken and the assessment of the direction and magnitude of change over time.
We employ different methodological approaches (from statistically rigorous to less formal) valuable for understanding patterns and processes of change. We engage diverse stakeholders and partners in monitoring to promote social learning, capacity development and communication among stakeholder groups and communities of practice, at local, sub-national and national scales.
Ensuring an enabling policy environment, including through intersectoral policy coordination, is important for achieving restoration objectives and goals over the long term. To this end, all relevant governance instruments (laws, regulations, policies, strategies and plans) should be mapped, adapted where appropriate, and integrated in the planning and implementation of projects, programmes and initiatives.
For maximum long-term net gain, KERA restorative activities ensures: coordinating actions among institutions, sectors and stakeholders, through a well-functioning governance system; fostering local, national and international political commitment and trans-boundary agreements; providing capacity-development opportunities to empower the people, organizations, institutions and networks involved in restoration; mainstreaming effective practices to have broad influence and allow replication; identifying, mobilizing and maintaining adequate funding from diverse sources to complete all phases of the process; developing income mechanisms that do not compromise the integrity of the restoration process and support its financial viability; and protecting the security of stakeholders and right-holders.