Case Study; sustainable forestry for food security and nutrition case Study

USTADI Foundation - a Local Capacity Development Facility in Kenya – Finding the Balance in Conserving Mangrove forests along the Coast, Livelihoods and Social Systems Support in Kwale County.

USTADI Foundation Kenyan not-for profit organization that seeks to bring a ‘coalition of change’ comprising partners from the private sector, civil society, government and different interest groups to focus on changing the rules around local capacity development market, alongside facilitating deliverables in sectors and themes that are important to local actors in priority sectors including; agriculture, water, renewable energy and environment.

USTADI received funding in December 2014 from Act Change Transform (Act!), another local NGO, to implement marine fishing, sea-weed farming and bee-keeping projects in Kwale County as a means for improving nutrition and supplementing incomes of rural entrepreneurs operating along the coastal strip, largely building on previous work by other actors in including; Coastal Rural Support Program, CRSP (funded by Aga Khan Foundation/Honey Care Africa), The Kenya Coastal Forest Protected Area System Project (Global Environment Facility, GEF), Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) and Act! (EU funding), among others. All the above actors sought to establishing cost-effective means for sustainable exploitation of aquatic and (riparian) environmental resources for economic and food security purposes by the local communities in Kwale County.

Kwale, one of Kenya’s 47 counties, is located in Southern Kenya, Based on the 2009 National Census the county population density stood at 78.5 ppl/sq km [population 649,931; area 8,270.2 Km²] and 122, 047 households (Kenya Population & Housing Census, 2009), with, 74.9% of the population living under the poverty datum line. This poverty created the problem of forest and coastal ecosystem destruction for food, fuel, settlement and grazing of livestock. Main economic activities included; fishing, mixed farming, apiculture, commercial businesses, mining, forestry and tourism – main forest-based attractions being Tsavo national park, Shimba Hills National Reserve, Mwaluganje Elephant Sanctuary, Sheldrick Falls, Maji moto springs and the mangrove beaches.

80% of Kwale County lies in arid and semiarid lands (ASAL; average temperature is 24.2°C and rainfall amounts range between 400mm and 1,680mm per annum), which is suitable for livestock rearing. The most important livestock species are; dairy cattle and goats, sheep, poultry and bees.

Kwale County is overlapped by the humid, higher rainfall coastal belt and the semi-arid interior, presenting a stark contrast between the eastern and western climatic zones. The western semi-arid interior covers a greater portion of the county. The eastern part of the district has high humidity displaying a more varied mix of vegetation, including forest areas, indigenous and exotic vegetation compared with the homogenous character of thorny Acacias, Commiphora, Euphobias and savanna grasses of the western zone.

The project target area (along the coast-line in Msambweni) has received much attention of actors working with local communities to achieve more balanced outcomes in ecological, social and economic activities, among them bee-keeping.

The ecosystem and livelihoods project began with an assessment of current status of marine fishing, sea-weed and bee-keeping business in Kwale (inventory of activities, capacity gaps at production, processing and market levels, gender, youth, environment/marine ecosystem conservation) and recommended structures that could inform scale-up, commercialization of the enterprises while maintaining the coastal forest lands and marine ecosystems using the value chain approach. Baseline information was obtained from local farmers, key actors including; commercial enterprises, relevant county government agencies, financial institutions, Kenya Forest Services, Kenya Marine Fisheries Research Institute and research agencies (International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology, ICIPE).

In 2003/4, Honey Care Africa (HCA) was involved in a community-based conservation (CBC) program that sought to generate income and conserve biodiversity in a manner that included participation of local communities and resource users. For nearly a decade now, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) has implemented socio-economic programs that focus on establishing cost-effective methods for sustainable exploitation of the aquatic resources (and the environment) while deriving social and economic benefits through participatory approaches with stakeholders including local communities. Under this program, indigenous uses of the flora and fauna, and the critical aquatic habitats have been documented. Since bees play an important role in in pollinating crops as well as their need for well conserved riparian vegetation, it became necessary to recognize the importance of establishing partnerships between communities and other like-minded institutions (i.e. governments, NGOs, etc.) in conservation and development projects.

Apiculture was not among the top 3 prioritized value-chains for Kwale Agriculture Sector Development Support Program (ASDSP-2010) but was nevertheless promoted in the rural areas as one of the industries that improve off farm incomes and conserve the environment, supplementing local fishermen incomes and therefore reducing overfishing and destruction of marine ecosystems. It was an activity that could be done by both genders; young or old improve the economic situation of hundreds of households in those riparian communities. Specifically, USTADI started out on current production level of 180 tons of honey/year and targets to raise that to 403 tons within the next one year as contribution to the rural economy from honey and bee-products alone.

The project is under implementation until 2016 and some of the key objectives will be to;

1. 
   Identify a local host organization that will organization will appreciate the ecological context within which these projects are located and will foster relationships with custodial government and private agencies mandated to protect marine ecosystems (KMFRI, KFS, WWF, Carbon Experts etc) to ensure that ecological, social and economic goals achieved with balance. This will reduce the perceived strain on natural resources (mangroves, over-fishing, and forests) as they seek to improve livelihoods.
   
2. 
   Scaling up carbon programs which are already being implemented in Kwale. KMFRI confirmed that in 2014, one government of Kenya sponsored Project (Gazi Mangrove re-forestation Program) pursued their economic objectives of running local enterprises and redeeming carbon credits while protecting the marine ecosystem largely through mangrove re-forestation.
   
3. 
   Seek to strengthen horizontal institutional linkages among forestry, ecological, research and commercial actors.