Skip to main content

Kenya Landscapes Actors Platform (KenLAP) Inaugural Conference: A Call for Unified Action in Environmental Conservation

          November 6 2024, Nairobi, Kenya

 In a powerful address at the Kenya Landscapes Actors Platform (KenLAP) inaugural conference, David Kuria, the County Executive Committee (CEC) for Environment, Kiambu County, underscored the urgent need for collaborative action to combat environmental degradation. The event, which brought together diverse stakeholders in conservation, highlighted the mounting threats to Kenya’s landscapes and emphasized the role of KenLAP in fostering coordinated solutions.

“Today, we gather with a shared commitment to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time,” Kuria stated, acknowledging that Kenya’s landscapes face a crisis driven by the annual loss of 12,000 hectares of forest. He outlined how agricultural expansion, settlement, and charcoal production contribute to this degradation, not only reducing biodiversity but also endangering food security, water resources, and ecosystem resilience.

Kuria highlighted that KenLAP’s mission rests on six thematic pillars:

1. Institutional Coordination and Governance: This area focuses on uniting stakeholders from grassroots to national levels, promoting transparent governance, effective resource allocation, and accountability in managing Kenya’s natural resources.

2. Landscape Finance and Innovation: Recognizing that many landscape actors lack financial resources, KenLAP advocates for innovative, sustainable financing. Kuria called on local and national authorities to support climate funding and reduce donor dependence.

3. Policy and Enabling Frameworks: Effective policies are essential, and KenLAP intends to review existing regulations and integrate emerging environmental issues, facilitating sustainable agricultural and conservation practices across Kenya.

4. Co-creation, Knowledge Sharing, and Information Management: Kuria emphasized the value of engaging communities directly, creating data hubs, and promoting participatory approaches to leverage local knowledge in landscape management.

5. Social Inclusion and Safeguards: KenLAP champions the inclusion of marginalized groups—indigenous communities, people with disabilities, and youth—in conservation efforts, and promotes sustainable livelihood programs, such as beekeeping and responsible grazing.

6. Landscape Monitoring: The importance of monitoring for transparency and accountability was emphasized, with Kuria advocating for simplified tools and citizen science to engage communities in data collection.

Kuria concluded with a stirring call to action: “The call to action we declare today is not only for government agencies and NGOs but for each of us. Together, let’s build an alliance that transcends individual efforts, leveraging our shared knowledge, resources, and commitment to a sustainable future for Kenya.”

The event marked a significant step for environmental stakeholders, with KenLAP emerging as a key platform to drive sustainability efforts across the country.

Comments

Post a Comment

good

Popular posts from this blog

MSEA Launches Transformative Training for Micro-Enterprises Under Government of Kenya and World Bank-Backed KJET Project.

Barny Kanja, a facilitator  from  Momentrum Consulting Africa Ltd   In a classroom buzzing with the quiet focus of entrepreneurs accustomed to working with their hands, a new kind of tool was being handed out: knowledge. This week, the Micro and Small Enterprises Authority (MSEA) continued with  classroom training of a transformative national project, offering a lifeline of practical skills to small business owners across Kenya.  The training started on 10th November 2025, with pilot projects bringing hope in different parts of the country. The session marks the first concrete step of the ambitious Kenya Jobs and Economic Transformation (KJET) Project , a five-year partnership (2024-2029) between the Government of Kenya and the World Bank. But for the men and women in the room, owners of small workshops, dairy cooperatives, textile producers, and fisheries, the project is more than policy. It’s a promise: to increase investment in their businesses, help them rea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Green Gold Rush: UK-Funded Forum Links African Innovators with Investors to Build a Cleaner Future.

  Nairobi, Kenya, By George Mutua. The air in Nairobi was thick with more than just the usual buzz of a city on the move today. Inside a conference hall, it crackled with the electricity of ambition and the smell of a greener future. More than 150 of Africa’s brightest green manufacturing entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders gathered for the Pan-African Green Business Building (GBB) Forum , a high-stakes meeting designed to turn climate-positive ideas into booming, job-creating businesses. Funded by the UK government through its flagship Manufacturing Africa programme, the one-day event was a vibrant marketplace of innovation. Its mission was simple but audacious: to connect the capital with the continent's most promising green startups, unlocking what research suggests could be a $2-4 billion a year market by 2030, and creating over 200,000 jobs in the process. Nairobi was the natural home for this gathering. Fresh off its crown as the continent's top destination f...
Post a Comment
Read more

KPC Foundation and eKitabu Forge a New Blueprint to Rescue Kenya’s Isolated Creatives.

  Rachel Gathoni, the Kenya Pipeline Company Managing Trustee and Foundation Manager Ngecha, Kiambu, Kenya, by George Mutua .  In the shadow of a bustling Nairobi that often races past its art, a quiet but determined revolution is taking root. At the Mlango Farm artistic community in Ngecha, a serene landscape of sustainable agriculture and deep creative history, the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) Foundation has launched the  Sanaa  initiative. This is not merely another corporate social responsibility event. Instead, it is a deliberate, structured attempt to diagnose and treat the chronic isolation and market fragmentation that have long plagued Kenya's writers, visual artists, and musicians. For one day, over fifty creatives, ranging from Gen Z digital poets to veteran painters who have been wielding brushes for forty years, sat elbow-to-elbow with corporate leaders. Their mission was brutally simple yet historically elusive:  to stop creating alone and start ...
Post a Comment
Read more