In Kenya, approximately 12 million people live on degraded land and food productivity has fallen behind the rate of population growth. Mount Kenya is a biodiversity reservoir, an important agricultural area, and a national water tow-er—a source of water for the surrounding watershed. The landscape has been impacted by increasingly frequent climate events with direct consequences to agricultural production and food security, illegal deforestation, land degradation, and commodity markets, resulting in farmland extending up the fertile slopes of the mountain and encroaching into protected forests, further threatening the water supply. Existing initiatives are operating in silos, missing opportunities for exchanging learnings and building synergies to optimize resources and ensure the sustainability of efforts.
To mitigate these challenges, the Rainforest Alliance is advancing five strategic and interconnected interventions to deliver conservation and efficient management of resources and ecosystem services, along with improved rural livelihoods in a vibrant, more equitable rural economy. This initiative is generously being supported by the IKEA Foundation.
