karatu tree nurseries

Introduction

In the previous article, we learned about sustainability and the importance of planting trees, focusing in on how doing so in the tropics is so much more efficient than in other parts of the world.

In this article we will explain how and why we plant our trees in Africa.

It’s a bit of a long story, but we hope you’ll gain some valuable insights into the practicalities and the value of the work that we do.

Why Africa?

There are two main reasons why our tree planting projects are focused exclusively on Africa.

The first reason is that we are very familiar with the continent. Almost all of us are involved in safari and conservation. We have a deep passion for the continent, have decades of experience of living and working in rural areas and, perhaps most importantly, we have the friendship and trust of local people.

The second reason is that, on top of the incredible carbon sequestration statistics, there are other major advantages to be derived from planting trees in Africa …

1 : Available land

In sub-Saharan Africa human populations are continuing to grow, which is putting increasing pressure on land use and causing widespread clearance of forests for agriculture.

However, in recent years it has become increasingly apparent that conventional western agriculture, with wide open fields, is not the best way to farm in the heat of the tropics.

The traditional form of farming in these parts has always been multi-storied agriculture, where large trees shade medium-sized crops like bananas, with maize and beans down at ground level. This mixed agriculture provides protection from the tropical sun, stabilises the humidity, reduces water loss through transpiration, maintains soil fertility and provides economic buffering against the failure of any one crop.

The current situation has provided us with a unique and enormous opportunity to re-educate farmers and provide them with saplings, in order that they can return to the practise of mixed agriculture, improving their output, whilst also sequestering carbon.

There is presently more land available tree planting than we can cope with, which is a nice problem to have.

2 : Alleviating rural poverty

The vast majority of the people who live in the areas in which we operate suffer from the deprivations of rural poverty.

One of our primary aims is to help alleviate this poverty, which we do by handing out our tree saplings free of charge, enabling people to improve their lot without having to invest any cash. So long as a farmer comes to collect the young trees in person and undertakes to plant and look after them, that’s good enough for us. They our honest, hard-working neighbours, who we trust to do their utmost to honour the bargain.

In recent years we have started to provide a wider range of trees, ‘branching out’ from our focus on indigenous forest trees and including other species which can deliver a greater economic boost to the farmers, like mango trees, avocado trees and pecan trees. After all, they all suck up carbon like it’s going out of fashion.

3 : Protecting biodiversity

There is little worse for biodiversity than land stripped bare for agriculture. The re-establishment of mixed agriculture provides far greater opportunities for a wide range of indigenous species to prosper. This creates much more effective buffer zones for areas of protected forest (such as the famous Ngorongoro Forest, which borders one of our areas), reversing the trend of species isolation and gene-pool reduction.

Meanwhile, the stabilisation of ground-level humidities and increased transpiration go a long way to restoring the local microclimates that existed before the indigenous forest was cleared.

4 : Environmental education

Our tree nurseries also contain simple classrooms, where local farmers and schoolchildren are educated about the water cycle, the carbon cycle, biodiversity and the importance of trees to the ongoing health of their natural and agricultural environments.

These people are keen to look after their own lands and are more than capable of doing so, once they have been equipped with sufficient knowledge and understanding.

Working with Africa

Getting things done in Africa is notoriously challenging. The continent works in unusual ways, it has a habit of soaking up time and obstructing forward progress, often in the nicest and most enjoyable ways possible.

If you want a sustainable operation in Africa, you cannot simply impose western work practises, You have to learn to work with rather than against the natural rhythms of the continent.

Our team members have a long-established track record of reliable and effective delivery, often under the most trying of circumstances.

Our pioneering tree-planting scheme in the Ngorongoro area of Tanzania was founded in 2009 by Denis Lebouteux, a Frenchman who is a prime mover in MKSC, the the oldest safari company in the country. His operation is successful because its staff have, over many decades, managed to work intimately with local communities, far more so than most.

If you were to travel with Denis, you would be amazed at the warmth and respect with which he is greeted at every single village. Unlike most foreigners, he is not regarded with suspicion, but considered a friend and ally.

As Denis himself describes :

“I can’t claim to have dreamed up the way we plant trees, I simply observed what was needed amongst the local people and looked to provide a solution. That’s why it works, because the people trust us and we trust them. We want them to plant trees and they want trees to plant.”

Understanding people the way Denis does does is a gift. Making operations in Africa run as smoothly as he does is little short of a miracle.

Working with farmers

Our tree-planting projects work because they combine the best science with the most effective and practical ways of working in Africa.

What we do is, on the face of it, delightfully simple.

After selecting an area which we feel is suitable for tree planting, we contact the local community through our already long-established person friendships. We then provide the funds to enable them to acquire a piece of land large enough for our tree nursery, to purchase and run a suitable vehicle and to employ usually three or four full-time members of staff who we can train and support.

As the nursery gets underway, we ensure that the word is fed out through the community that local villagers and farmers are welcome to visit and join our educational sessions, where we teach them about the benefits of growing their crops below shade trees.

Once the saplings start to mature, we invite these local people to come to the nursery and collect (usually) up to twenty trees of various species, free of charge, to take home and plant on their land.

These trees help to alleviate poverty by increasing farm yields and providing additional cash crops.

From a carbon sequestration point of view, the most wonderful thing about this way of working is the very high levels of success that we experience in turning saplings into mature trees. If farmers are willing to walk or cycle for an hour or more to get to the nursery, then you can bet that they will be committed to ensuring that their trees reach maturity.

More from Denis :

“It is a wonderful, informal social contract, exactly the kind of thing that works effectively in Africa. No large and impersonal outside intervention, just an honourable understated deal between villagers from the same intimate community.”

Our pioneering first project in Karatu has proved the efficacy of this approach, having distributed over 300,000 trees into the local community and having a transformative effect on the local landscapes.

We are presently engaged in the process of setting up more nurseries in other communities, each with an effective radius of around 5km (the maximum distance that we could reasonably expect a farmer to walk or cycle to pay us a visit) and each with a production capacity of around 30,000-50,000 saplings per year.

We believe that there is the potential for many dozens of such nurseries in northern Tanzania alone, hundreds if not thousands when we consider other viable countries including Kenya, Malawi and Zambia. If we could raise sufficient funds through selling carbon credits, we could potentially be planting tens of millions of trees every year.

Delayed gratification

One of the greatest problems with using trees to sequester carbon is the inherent time delay between planting a sapling and it growing into a really productive absorption machine.

We overcome this issue in two very important ways.

1 : Using tropical trees

In addition to their increased capacity to sequester carbon, tropical trees also offer the fundamental advantage of maturing much more quickly.

The Critical Age is defined as the point at which a tree switches from growing upwards to growing outwards, after which the carbon sequestration becomes far more pronounced. For a tropical tree this is typically around 10-20 years, compared with 50-100 years for a temperate mid-latitude tree and 80-120 years for a high-latitude boreal tree.

Planting tropical trees therefore greatly reduces (but does not completely eliminate) the delay in carbon gratification.

2 : Pre-planting trees

Fortunately for us, our projects started planting trees many years ago, before selling carbon credits became a thing. We did it because it seemed like the right thing to do and we financed it ourselves and through the kind contributions from safari travellers passing through.

This means we have a huge stock of ready-matured trees for which carbon credits have not yet been sold.

When we receive payment from our partners, we are therefore able to allocate carbon sequestration from trees which are already mature, whilst using your money to plant new trees. In other words, your carbon emissions are sequestered immediately.

Furthermore, since the trees continue to absorb more and more carbon as they mature, the sequestration capacity that you have paid for will continue to deliver increasing rates every year through the life of the trees. All you need to pay for in subsequent years is an ongoing maintenance fee that enables us to continue planting a smaller number of trees to offset for natural lossage.

Geographic mismatch

Another question that we are often asked is whether planting trees in Africa is an effective way of offsetting carbon emissions generated in other parts of the world.

The short answer to this question is ‘yes’.

Unlike temperature, which can vary enormously and create pronounced gradients around the world, gases are very effective at equalising over great distances, providing consistent dilutions across locations.

The dilution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can increase slightly in the immediate vicinity of large and active sources of emissions (such as particularly ‘dirty’ cities, coal-fired power stations and factories), but these are relatively minor and transient effects.

So when our African trees extract carbon dioxide out of the air, the (heavily diluted) effect is experienced almost simultaneously around the globe

Progress and ambition

When we started back in 2009, our tree planting ambitions were modest. It was a small sideline, a voluntary project that we wanted to start because we thought it was the right thing to do.

In the first ten years we planted just under half a million trees. That’s about 130 saplings per day, not a vast amount, but certainly not insignificant.

Since realising that we could fund expansion through selling carbon credits, we are now working on scaling up to to plant millions of trees each and every year.

Having proved the replicability of our projects on the ground, the key now is to attract enough partners to provide the necessary finance.

We invite you to join us, neutralising your carbon footprint, whilst helping us to plant trees and lift lovely local people out of rural poverty.

That’s what we call really making a difference.