In a bid to restore the declining forest cover due to human activity, the government has embarked on a countrywide programme to rehabilitate and protect up to 107 small natural forests, as the country struggles to deal with adverse effects of climate change.

Between January and May, over 300 people died due in landslides and floods caused by floods, while 200 people were reported to have been injured and 10,000 homes destroyed.

The disasters also destroyed up to 4,560ha of crops, seven churches, 58 roads, 42 bridges and 705 livestock killed.

“We have seen a decline in the forest cover because of people cutting trees and leaving the hills bare, which has had an adverse effect. The plan is to restore the forest cover by at least 30 per cent by 2020,” said Uwizeye Emmanuel, the director of Forest Conservation and Development in the Ministry of Lands and Forestry.

Big contributor

He said that although there are other factors that contributed to the landslides, cutting down trees and destroying the forest cover was a big contributor.

“Cutting down trees is a big contributor of the landslides and floods.Planting more trees and rehabilitating forests will not stop them 100 per cent, but can reduce their occurrence by more than 50 per cent,” he said.

He said the loss of organic matter needed to bind soil particles together for stability has affected the country’s soil structure and texture.

He added that there is a geological effect and the country’s hard rock is declining, so when it rains the water infiltrates to the bedrock, which makes it easy for landslides to happen, since the topsoil is also weak.

The country’s forests are water catchment areas especially the forests in Nyabihu, Giswati, and Rubavu. However, because these forests have been reducing due to human activity.

As part of the long-term forest restoration strategy, the government will work closely with residents living around the natural forests as part of conservation efforts.

This includes planting new species of trees, mixing trees and crops in some of the forests, as well as planting trees on the fringes of the protected forests as a way of providing residents with alternative ways of addressing their economic needs.

Investment

In a recent Forest and Landscape Investment Forum in Kigali, the experts called for investments to realise green cover of more than 100 million hectares of degraded forests and land on the continent.

These efforts are in line with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15, which calls for halting and reversing land and natural habitat degradation, and the Bonn Challenge, which is a global initiative that seeks to restore 150 million hectares of the world’s deforested and degraded land by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030.

According to a recent forest ecosystem services survey, the total value of forest services was Rwf152 million per year, but only Rwf11.6 million or 7.5 per cent of the total value were traded in economic markets, the remaining Rwf 140.5 million, or 92.5 per cent of the total value are linked to non-market values, which indirectly benefit people.