World Wide Fund for Nature-Kenya (WWF-Kenya) and the State Department for Forestry have formalised a five-year strategic partnership to accelerate Kenya’s 15 Billion Trees Initiative and support the restoration of degraded landscapes across the country.
The partnership will bring together government coordination and WWF-Kenya’s technical expertise, resources and community-based conservation experience to strengthen landscape restoration, tree-growing and livelihood programmes.
Principal Secretary for Forestry Gitonga Mugambi said the scale of Kenya’s restoration ambitions requires collaboration between government, the private sector, communities and other non-state actors.
Kenya aims to grow 15 billion trees by 2032 as part of efforts to reverse environmental degradation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore 10.6 million hectares of degraded landscapes.
The initiative is anchored in the National Landscape and Ecosystem Restoration Strategy (2023–2032), which provides the broader framework for restoring forests, water towers, rangelands, wetlands, marine areas, agro-ecosystems, settlements and infrastructure.
Mugambi said the government is also using the JazaMiti platform to track tree-growing progress across all 47 counties, with emphasis shifting from simply planting trees to ensuring they survive and reach maturity.
Under the agreement, WWF-Kenya will provide technical, advocacy and communication support to the 15 Billion Trees Secretariat. It will also work with public and private sector partners to replicate successful landscape restoration models in other priority areas.
One model highlighted by WWF-Kenya is the Kaptagat Integrated Conservation Programme, which has been implemented since 2020 across 26,902 hectares covering six forest blocks in the Northern Mau ecosystem.
The programme has so far restored more than 2,700 hectares of forestland, with over 1.8 million seedlings planted.
It has also supported the construction of Etio and Yogot dams, providing clean water to about 15,000 farmers and creating 2,000 direct jobs, while 95 cross-breed heifers, beehives and high-value cash crops have been provided to community farmers.
WWF-Kenya CEO, Jackson Kiplagat, said the Kaptagat experience demonstrates the importance of linking environmental restoration to household livelihoods.
The organisation’s approach is built around four pillars, household income, clean energy, access to clean water and healthy landscapes, with the aim of ensuring communities benefit directly from conservation.
WWF-Kenya will also continue implementing its #KeepKenyaBreathing platform, launched in 2018 to mobilise citizens, schools and corporates to participate in tree growing.
More than 3.06 million seedlings grown by citizens and corporates have so far been mapped through the platform across at least 25 counties.
The organisation has set a target of mobilising public and private resources to grow one billion trees across its priority landscapes.
The partnership comes as Kenya seeks to expand restoration beyond tree-planting campaigns towards long-term landscape management, community participation and measurable tree survival.
Both sides called for greater involvement of corporates, communities and individual citizens, with WWF-Kenya urging partners to move beyond one-off tree-planting exercises and support landscapes until restoration efforts are established.
