2nd World Agroforestry Congress Concludes with Tree-planting Advocation

Anchor: Plant trees, more trees...That's a message of a high profile international conference sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP. More than a thousand experts have convened for the 2nd world Agroforestry Congress in the institute's headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya over the past week to discuss the importance of afforestation to humanity's survival.Our Nairobi correspondent Wei Tong has more.

The congress was all about calling upon people to plant trees as a way of reducing the effects of global warming.
The meeting also highlighted the need for a greater commitment to research and growing trees in farming systems to address urgent global challenges of deforestation and food security.

Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and renowned environmental activist Wangari Maathai says there is a need to raise public awareness on tree planting and harvesting rain water as a way of averting the effects of climate change.

"We have a role to play in protecting trees. We should be prepared by digging trenches, cut of drains, preparing those terraces, ensuring that we have vegetation covering the soil to allow the water to go into the ground rather than allow the water to run off because if it will run off rivers and take with it the top soil."

Even with the calls to plant trees, experts are asking farmers to be cautious of the species of trees they plant as some consume a lot of water leading to the drying up of rivers.

Professor Wangari Maathai says indigenous trees are friendly to the environment and should be encouraged.

"Quite a time we over focus on trees that have a commercial value, and that is why Eucalyptus and Cider trees in this country have been so popularized. But I think that in trying to adapt and especially deal with the climate change, surely we will do better with the trees that are indigenous to the area wherever we are."
United Nations Environmental Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner says the outstanding challenge is inadequate funding.

"At this point of time for many developing countries, the amounts of financing for that partnership that have been discussed seemed not credible at this stage. And that is particularly true for a continent like Africa. Climate change impacts are beginning to unfold really. And adaptation is not a theoretical concept but rather an urgent set of steps need to be taken, but where is the financial support?"

As food security and slowing forest destruction top the global agenda, this congress will feature new research on sustainable approaches to farming that can help slow climate change and meet the food demands of an extra three billion people by 2050.

Wei Tong, CRI News, Nairobi, Kenya.