Environmentalists condemn Ruto for uplifting cutting trees ban

By Robert Mutasi

Coastal region environmentalists have criticized President William Ruto's move to lift his predecessor's ban on preventing deforestation in the country.

Led by Bigship Director General Bosco Juma, the activists said the President's move to lift the ban would suppress government efforts and environmentalists to preserve Kenya's forests.

Speaking in the Jomvu Constituency in Mombasa, Juma said the ban imposed on retired President Uhuru Kenyatta had helped in protecting and increasing the percentage of the country's forests in an effort to tackle climate change.

"The decrease in the percentage of forests from 30 percent to a minimum of 10 percent is therefore illegal and it is what it contributed to, also to say preventing deforestation from our country and this is one of the best ways used by the government to ensure that we have been able to decrease deforestation and to ensure that our country has returned to a climate change situation," said Juma.

The environmentalist expressed concern that if appropriate strategies are not set by the government it is clear that the rates of the country's forests will decrease even more.

"As an environmentalist, this is then a disappointment because it will be able to slow down the measures that had already been taken by the previous term government," Juma added.

However, according to President William Ruto, the ban has prevented many Kenyans from benefiting from carpentry jobs and forcing people to import goods from foreign nations.

"There is another minister who went and blocked all the things of the forestry that disappeared, people worry on this side they have no timber, so that all the words we have now removed and said We will do it on a deal," said President Ruto.

Ruto's statement contradicts the tree planting plan that he had created several months ago warning Kenyans to plant more trees to increase the number of forests to combat climate change.

"And let's put forward a plan to plant 15 billion trees, that's what we will be able to find trees that we will use for our use and have trees that will help us protect the environment," said Ruto.