Interview: Victor Mwanga, CEO of EarthLungs Reforestation Foundation

Victor Mwanga

Victor Mwanga is the founder and CEO of the EarthLungs Reforestation Foundation, which has planted over 32 million trees across Kenya.

In the interview below, this writer’s questions and comments are in bold, Mr. Mwanga’s words are in regular text, and extra clarification added after the interview are in bold italics or footnotes.

This interview is syndicated by both The Weekly Anthropocene and Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope.

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Could you share the story of how you got involved in bamboo planting and eventually reforestation in general?

My background is in logistics, professionally. In a lot of African countries, people have a house where you work, in the urban area, like Nairobi, and then you have a rural home where your ancestry is. I bought a piece of land for agricultural purposes in that rural area. I realized that it was too steep and it was kind of degraded because of overuse and unsustainable land management practices. So on one side of the land, I planted bamboo, and on the other side I planted eucalyptus. That was in 2007.

After about 5 years, where the bamboo and eucalyptus had been planted there was a sharp difference. Where the eucalyptus was, the soil continued to deteriorate, and where the bamboo was, there was a huge turn in the area. The soil was much better. There were birds that were now coming in and there was support for life.

Source.

So I decided to bring down the eucalyptus and plant bamboo all over the place. I started then looking and researching around bamboo. In 2014, I visited China to look at their bamboo industry. When I came back, I started working on value-addition for the bamboo on my farm. Later on, I decided we needed an association of bamboo farmers in Kenya, so I founded the Bamboo Association of Kenya. I served as chairman until two years ago.

Out of that grew a passion for the environment, and to look at how communities can sustainably use their land while at the same time conserving the environment. I founded the EarthLungs Reforestation Foundation on November 18, 2021. It’s a reforestation foundation with a model of “Decent Wages for Decent Living for Decent Reemergence of Forests.” Ideally, how do we get the people and communities living around degraded forest land to have a decent living so they don’t destroy forests to survive anymore? By working on reforestation, they can earn a living while creating new forests, they become the owners and custodians of those forests, so they have a total buy-in.

We started in working in partnership with the Kenya Forest Service. Very slowly at the initial stages, but we’ve now become the largest tree-growing organization in Kenya, where we have so far grown 32 million trees, with about 90 to 92 percent survival rates.

Wow. That's very impressive.

We now have 617 members of staff, and 1,200 temporary staff who come in from time to time. So 1,800 people on our payroll to some extent. We’re even now in discussions to work with the Tanzania Forest Service, and we’ve opened the EarthLungs Reforestation Foundation Tanzania.

I didn’t know you were expanding to Tanzania!

Yes.

Amazing. So, what’s your partnership with the Kenya Forest Service like? How do you identify areas of degraded forest that need your work?

Source.

The Kenyan Forest Service has data on which areas are degraded, those that are fragile ecosystems, but sometimes they lack the technology to identify these places. So we came in with technology, we use drones, we use high resolution maps. We go in, we look at an area, and for us to prioritize an area to work in, it must be at least 70% degraded, in various stages of degradation. There must be a community in the area that is in need of employment opportunities.

In our site profiling, we go out and we identify these areas using a criteria that is set up. Where is the area? How fragile is that ecosystem? How long has it been degraded? What led to degradation? What is the percentage of degradation in that area? Are the people in that area willing to participate in restoration? Is the area big enough that we can be there planting and growing trees for at least five years, minimum? Because you don't want to go into a place and give people employment for six months and you're out, there's no permanency, there isn’t any meaningful gain by that community. So we look at a minimum of five years being in one area and planting and growing trees.

Then we can also start looking at wealth creation. Our members of staff are earning, how are they translating that into savings? How are they taking their kids to school? Can they afford three meals a day now? And then look at investment opportunities. When someone gets paid at the end of the month, what are they doing? Are they buying an asset? It could be a live asset, which is an animal, like a sheep, a goat or a cow or chicken. Or a technological asset. A lot of them have transitioned from kerosene to solar lamps, improving their lives. Kids are dropping out of school less. You can now see there is a much higher retention rate in the schools.

And how we go about selecting the people that work in these spaces, there is also a criteria, and the criteria involves the most needy members of that community. It could be someone who is either widowed or a widower, someone who's lost a spouse. It could be single mothers, who more often than not are looked at differently by society, so never given a chance. It could be a young passionate person who wakes up every morning to just go and voluntarily plant trees in the forest, a person who has already shown interest. We give those people employment opportunities.

Sometimes you get in an area, you find that there are people who are illegal loggers, cutting trees and burning charcoal. They are doing that not because they want to do it, but because that is the only resource that is around them and that is the only way they can make ends meet! Instead of stigmatizing such a person, labeling them as a destroyer of forests, rehabilitate that person by making him become now a tree planter, a person who takes care of the trees and the environment.

This is spectacular.

What kind of difficulties arise on the ground? I've read there's been some extreme weather events in Kenya in the last 10 years, droughts and storms. Are there times and places where it's difficult to plant trees?

Yeah. First, the cycle of rains. You cannot afford to irrigate a tree-growing area, because of the size. So we depend on rainfall, which has two seasons in Kenya. “M-A-M,” March-April-May, that is the long rains. And then we have another one, just about to start now, which is “O-N-D,” October-November-December. So these six months of the year, we are able to plant trees.

The challenge then becomes that because of issues of climate change today, you are no longer assured that the rains will come with the intensity that you’re used to. Sometimes it’s too much, sometimes it’s too little. Sometimes you get landslides happening and washing away trees, or areas getting flooded and the trees dying off. We are trying to manage this with informed planting. We try to plant in areas which are likely to support trees to grow fast, where we’ve checked the soil structure to avoid things like landslides. And once that tree grows, it’ll be able to help support and strengthen the soil, it will now be able to support the areas that are fragile, that are prone to landslides, mudslides, and floods.

The other challenge is, in some cases, you find that trees are completely lost in an area, so you have to find out what trees were there initially. You can go and get them from a healthy forest and come reintroduce them back into the area.

Another challenge is, God forbid, if there’s wildfires. They destroy trees, obviously. And sometimes animals, both domestic and wild, will come and graze and step on trees and so on and so forth. We then look at scouts who can deal with the domestic animals and look for barriers that will not allow the animals to stray and get into a newly planted area and browse on the trees.

Even with all of these challenges, landslides and floods and wildfires and browsing animals, you still have 90-92% survival rates? That’s impressive.

It’s basically the community. The driver of success is the community. Because remember, the community understands that site where you're doing reforestation more than you coming in from outside. They know which animals are there or which animals belong to who. For instance, they know how to keep away elephants. How do you keep them away? You just grow chili around the area and they will not come in. Now you’re keeping them away but you're not interfering with the ecological balance of the area.

Can you discuss the challenges and opportunities of the different ecosystems you work in, from drylands to mangrove forests? You must plant very different mixes of tree species for all the different places you work.

Yes, so we have predominantly three types of ecosystems that we work in. One is the terrestrial ecosystem, which is the mainland trees. Then there’s the mangroves ecosystem, which is under our marine ecosystem program. And then we have agroecosystems, which is the trees that we plant on farmlands. Fruit trees, commercial woodlots, and bamboo. Commercial woodlots are basically people who have land where they would like to convert part of it into trees that are for commercial purposes, for timber.

Can you discuss the story of how you came to partner with Climate Action Now?

Source.

It’s very interesting. Brett [CEO of CAN] was introduced to us by one of our partners who was very impressed with our ethical, evidence-based tree planting program, where we’re able to report on the trees we’ve planted thanks to our technology partner called Veritree. We were introduced, and Brett of Climate Action Now listened to what it is that we do. He asked whether he could plant and grow trees with us. So we signed, and when we did our first planting, we shared with him photos of how the whole progress was coming up and how we report our trees in a very ethical way and our transparent way of operating, and our structured cost per tree. He's been happy from there on and has been supporting our tree growing. We are hoping that he will keep on expanding his base so he can get more people who can support the very brilliant work that he's doing.

Can you tell me more about Veritree and your monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system? As you know, this is historically a big issue for reforestation programs around the world. How do you keep track of all the trees you planted, with Veritree?

Source.

Previously, we would go into the field with a lot of notebooks, collecting raw data. The Veritree system is Android based and also supports the other systems. So using the Veritree system, you go into the field, you capture all the data that you require, input it in the Veritree system, and then you can do cool stuff with the data. It gives you the geolocation, you can actually geofence trees and count only the trees in a particular area, your trees. And then the monitoring and evaluation fellows will come back and look at the progress of the trees, take photos and share them up. 

We also have an AI tool in the system that does simulation of the planted areas, and it's able to count the live trees and the dead trees and those that are struggling.

On top of that, there are the bioacoustic recorders, that start showing which kind of birds are coming back into the forest as we rehabilitate it, which animals are coming back into the forest as we do rehabilitation.

And then there's dendrometers that are taking all the data on temperature, what stress is there on the trees, at what rate are they growing, and so on and so forth.

So all that is put in the Veritree system, and then the Veritree system is able to speak to us and tell us, this is how we are doing, this is the survival rate.

Source.

And you can actually see. Say, if one site today planted 15,000 trees, and then tomorrow you see the same site has planted 30,000 trees without doubling the number of the people working there, then you know that there is an inconsistency that needs to be addressed. It keeps everybody on task. It ensures that people are doing the right thing. It shows where the trees are planted so it can track the trees. And it is able to produce reports to show the progress that is being made.

That sounds like a really good system.

Yeah, it is a super system!

That must have taken so much work to set up. Where do you get the support for the dendrometers and the bioacoustic recording and stuff? Do you partner with local universities or government agencies?

Veritree works with a number of universities, and they are able to source these for us and send them for fixing up in the sites.

All right, great.

I've been reading about a lot of really interesting stories coming out of Kenya lately. Kenya has become one of the world leaders in geothermal energy technology, which is really a big deal in the East African Rift Valley. You've got a really fast-growing economy. And Kenya just became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to be designated a U.S. “major non-NATO ally,” which is a really big deal.  How does your work intersect with the many other big changes happening in your fast-growing country?

Kenya’s constitution is very clear on its agenda for trees and ecosystems. That’s the first thing, that we have a constitution that’s supportive of ecosystem restoration. The second thing is, being in the tropics and right next to the equator, we have fairly good climatical conditions that allow the growing of trees. And in the political space, we've had presidents talking about tree planting and tree growing, with the current president [William Ruto] having a very ambitious plan to plant 15 billion trees by 2032. There is government goodwill, there is political goodwill, there is an enabling environment. And then, of course, we have increased harnessing of sustainable, clean power, from geothermal and so on.

Consider that Kenya hosts the headquarters of the United Nations Environmental Program, their offices are in Kenya. Kenya is like the headquarters of the global environmental discussion. All those things align and make our work very relevant and getting the influence that it gets.

So you really are swimming with the current, so to speak. There's a lot of interest and political support in planting trees.

Yes, yes.

What are some specific tree species that you use very often? Like pioneer trees, maybe nitrogen fixation trees, trees that are good to plant in degraded land. Is bamboo mostly your first go-to plant? Acacia?

There are thousands and thousands of different species of trees. There's something that is called species to site matching, so which species grows where and does well in which ecological zones. One of the things that we use is a tool that can tell you which species is right for which area. So that is the first way, species-to-site matching. Then there is indigenous knowledge. Every community that lives adjacent to a forest knows which trees were predominant in that area. You even find areas named after specific species of trees, a place called Acacia, for example.

And then there are a few trees that are commonly growing from all the way from the coast to the highlands. Trees like Croton. There are two types of protons, Croton megalocarpus and Croton macrostachyus. That is a tree that is common in Kenya. There are different acacias, many species in that genus, with different ecological zones. Then there's a tree that is called Markhamia lutea, which is also a common tree. That is a tree that you find across many ecological zones. Another is Prunus africana. There is also a tree called Olea africana.

Fascinating.

So those are terrestrial trees. And then there are predominantly nine species of mangroves on the Kenyan coast. With the most common one being Avicennia marina. The other common mangroves are called Rhizophora mucronata and Ceriops tagal.

Do you have a favorite tree? Maybe one of the first ones you planted or that you personally just always enjoy?

In the mangroves, I like a mangrove that is called Heritiera littoralis. The tulip mangrove or the looking glass mangrove.

Why is Heritiera littoralis your favorite?

Because it's a very interesting mangrove. It grows almost like a terrestrial tree, yet it's a mangrove. And it is endangered, but it's a huge tree. It's a huge mangrove.

Awesome!

An African tulip tree in California.

In the terrestrial trees, I like a tree that is called the Nandi flame or Spathodea. Spathodea campanulata, the African tulip tree! Yeah, it's one of my favorite trees. And of course, I'm nicknamed Bamboo because of the work that I've done with the bamboos.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

For us, the joy is, of course, seeing degraded areas getting back to their original green. But the most important part is the joy that forest-adjacent communities have when we go in and set up projects, and you’re seeing all these smiles, even on the kids. All of them happy that there is something positive happening in the lives of their parents, in the lives of their siblings, you know. That one is like the biggest thing that you can ever expect. We call them the radiating smiles of Africa to the world.

That's wonderful.

The other thing we are looking at is something called “B-Trees,” for “Beyond Trees.” And this is something that I've just started a discussion on recently. What happens after these communities have planted their trees, and the forest is full? You know, the people living and working there become part of the family. We call each other friends. We all work for EarthLungs. Do we just want to wake up after six years and say “Bye, we’re gone?”? That’s how many donor-funded projects collapse, because there’s no longevity in them.

With Beyond Trees, basically, we are looking at how to sustain these communities so that the moment the project comes to an end, we transition them from being tree planters, tree growers, and nursery operators to become forest scouts. They can take care of the trees they planted, they can patrol the forest, they can be tour guides to people who are coming to visit the forest. We are putting in a program of beehives; 10 hives can support one person for 20 years, for 50 years. So that goes beyond just being a project that has a lifespan. It goes beyond tree planting. And those bees then become forest guards because if you go into a forest that has bees, you'll get stung if you cut a tree. Those bees start doing pollination, the health of the forest is improved. Then you can harvest honey and the other products.

That's really excellent! I really admire all the work you're doing and how you guys seem to be constantly creative, constantly looking for new ideas. What else do you have on the horizon?

What we have on the horizon is to look at other countries. You and I require passports and visas to travel from one country to another. You need an identification document when you go to the bank, because they want to establish that it's you even if they serve you every day. But the ecosystem doesn’t have boundaries. The water in France will find itself one day in Kenya. The trees at the border don’t require a visa for that forest to transition into the next country. There’s no immigration office stopping the fish from swimming across borders. We’re looking at an ecosystem as a global item that goes beyond political boundaries and government red tape. And so if we are able to connect all the ecosystems in the world, then that would be an amazing thing. Because the birds that fly out of Europe during winter to come and nest in Africa require a place in Africa to land and nest. And when they come back to France, they need to find a place to also nest and rest. The ecosystems are intertwined, they're interlinked.

That is spectacular. Thank you so much.

One other thing is that I don't just go out there to grow these trees by myself. I have a very supportive family. They are not just supporting, but they also involve themselves in the tree growing and tree planting.

Great!

Thank you so much, Victor, for this great conversation. And thank you so much for all the great work you do that, like you said, benefits the entire world.

Thank you.