Kenya’s economy is highly dependent on climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, fisheries, forestry and energy. Approximately 80% of Kenya’s population is directly and indirectly dependent on rain-fed agriculture for basic livelihoods. The most vulnerable sectors happen to be the agricultural and water sectors where land degradation remains a major threat to the provision of environmental services and the ability of smallholder farmers to meet the growing demand for food and incomes. The interactions between climate change and land degradation are likely to affect a range of different social and ecosystem functions they deliver, with consequent impacts on food production, livelihoods and human well-being. The areas most affected by these impacts also happen to be the most productive in Kenya. Unless these challenges are seriously addressed, achieving the full potential of Kenya’s natural land resources could prove difficult.
The process of preventing or reducing land degradation and rehabilitating degraded lands is essentially a long-term development that requires the enactment of appropriate policies and supporting institutions as well as enabling environment that ensures participation of all stakeholders and land users.
Sustainable Land Management (SLM) has in recent years been a focus of the Government and various development partners, due to its potential to minimize degradation, rehabilitate degraded lands and increase food production.
While the government of Kenya has made significant commitments toward sustaining natural resources through various agreements (such as UNCCD, UNFCCC, CBD, SDGs), the push to implement and scale up SLM interventions and investments to tackle land degradation in a coordinated approach across stakeholders and all sectors remains inadequate.
In response to these challenges the Government of Kenya, through the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MENR) is has developed the Kenya Strategic Investment Framework (KSIF) for sustainable land management (SLM) to guide in addressing land management issues through effective multi-sectoral, multi- stakeholder partnerships and collaboration. The KSIF is a tool to foster a programmatic approach to scaling up SLM practices across all relevant sectors and its implementation is envisaged to lead to a systematic change to upscale policy, institutional, governance and financial responses to the scaling up of SLM, by adopting a cross-sectoral integrated development approach to SLM.
This framework is an important tool because it identifies gaps, opportunities and priorities for scaling up SLM. The Framework outlines clear roles for key sectors and stakeholders to guide and focus interventions which support securing ecosystems and actions for moving Kenya towards land degradation neutrality as part of contributing towards the attainment of Vision 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Meanwhile, Kenya has been collaborating with international and national organizations in addressing the land degradation problem through various programmes and initiatives. The Kenya Strategic Investment Framework (KSIF) for sustainable land management is one of such collaborations with the World Bank and TerrAfrica aimed at scaling up SLM interventions and investments in Kenya. The KSIF is a tool adopted by the Government to strengthen a programmatic approach to SLM responding to the country’s development priorities as outlined under Vision 2030.
It is important to note that, this the first national Strategy targeted at SLM holistically in a multi-sectoral focus, designed to upscale actions and investment funding. This document provides a framework, which guides current and future SLM priorities and planned investments that, in the medium term will form a national program on SLM.
I wish to reaffirm the commitment of the MENR in supporting sustainable land management, and the implementation of the KSIF. Indeed, our natural resources, and the environment need to be used carefully and protected, as these are important assets for socio-economic development and for our people, now and in the future. I urge all stakeholders to play their respective roles in ensuring that the Kenya Strategic Investment Framework is successfully implemented.
Prof. Judi Wakhungu
Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources