Kenyan government has stopped the exportation of Kilifi baobabs to Georgia. Kilifi county, data shows, has experienced the third-highest rate of tree-cover loss in Kenya over the last two decades.
The Kenya Times understands that the state is probing “how a foreign contractor received permission to transport the ancient trees out of the country.”
President William Ruto ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to “investigate whether Georgy Gvasaliya had the proper license to take the trees out of Kenya under the Nagoya protocol.“
“There must be adequate authorization and an equitable benefit sharing formula for Kenyans. Further, the exercise must be in line with the government’s agenda of planting 15bn trees in the next 10 years,” Ruto said in a tweet.
The ministry issued a statement in which it said that the environmental impact assessment license issued to Gvasaliya in October, allowing the trees to be uprooted and exported, had been given “irregularly”.
According to the protocol, communities must give prior “informed consent” to any exports, and, as Caroline Kimeu notes, an agreement between whoever is taking them, the government and the community, on how the benefits should be shared.
Reacting to the development, Gus Le Breton, chair of the African Baobab Alliance said: “This has sent a clear message to the world that the exploitation of Kenya’s biodiversity can only happen when Kenyans are meaningful beneficiaries.”
The termination of transportation and export of the Kilifi baobabs has, Breton says, “big implications globally in terms of reiterating the importance of the Nagoya protocol to regulate trade and biodiversity.”