Scaling up Land-based Mitigation in Kenya: Pros and Cons

We recently brought out a new report, that analyses how our LMT portfolio for Kenya could be adopted at scale. This portfolio – which was co-designed with local experts with intimate knowledge of Kenya’s land-use sector – is a set of practices that could mitigate climate change by sequestering more carbon in plants, trees, or the soil.  

We’re using this report to create simulation models to reliably estimate how much carbon could be stored if these practices became more widely adopted.  Reliable estimates are pretty useful:  they can potentially inform everything from individual farmers’ soil management practices, to national climate plans and international climate negotiations.

But they are also interesting for people interested in Kenya’s land-use sector, as they contain some interesting detail about both the co-benefits of, and the potential barrier to, these practices becoming widespread.

The Four LMTs for Kenya

The four LMTs we chose for deep analysis in Kenya are conservation tillage, integrated soil fertility, agroforestry and afforestation.

These are effective solutions don’t require expensive technologies and offer some potential synergies in the Kenyan context.

Conservation tillage

 In the report we explore the possibility of Kenyan farmers adopting conservation tillage, which means applying tillage practices that less strongly disturb the soil, or (if feasible) eliminating tillage altogether in favour of direct seeding. This reduces the losses of carbon stored in the soil.

Pros

One advantage of this is that it’s a form of carbon sequestration that isn’t in conflict with other ways of using the land. It’s a simple practice that could be applied to most agriculutural fields. It is also more climate resilient– reduced tillage tends to result in better soil structure. This makes the soil absorb water more efficiently, and makes the land less prone to erosion following heavy rains.

Possible cons

 A possible barrier to it being implemented is it could result in higher costs for farmers who would need to find another way to deal with weeds. (One of the main advantages of heavier tillage is that it removes weeds).  It could also possibly reduce yields – a potentially serious issue for Kenya where food security is a priority. More research into conservative tillage is needed to assess these possible risks.

Integrated soil fertility

Integrated soil fertility is a way of maintaining soil fertility by the combining different inputs, in a way that is suitable to the local conditions. One example of this might be the fertilizer, organic residue inputs and improved germplasm, all together to maximize the efficiency of nutrients. 

Pros

This is good for climate mitigation because it increases the amount of carbon retained in the soil. Potentially, it’s also good for farmers because it increases crop yields. This is a practice that the potential to be a double-win strategy for the government: it’s not only a way to enhance agricultural production and food security, it also offers climate mitigation potential.

Possible cons

Once again, research gaps are a possible risk to scaling this practice up to the national level in Kenya. For example, there can be negative side effects of practicing integrated soil fertility, in some situations. Most significantly, while it offsets carbon emissions, it can in some contexts lead increase in nitrogen emissions, making its overall contribution to offsetting greenhouse gas emissions harder to calculate.

Agroforestry is a way of farming that combines  trees or shrubby elements with agricultural production.

Pros

This can be particularly beneficial for crops that need shade (like coffee) and it’s good for biodiversity and the soil, and prevents erosion and water runoff. And because Kenya has so much sun, agroforestry is unlikely to negatively effect crop yield in Kenya the way it can in other places. If the trees planted have marketable fruits or timber, it can also be good for diversifying farmers’ income.

Possible cons

But, maintaining trees on farm land can potentially increase labour costs for farmers, as someone will need to prune and look after the trees.

Afforestation

Kenya is a country with low levels of forest cover. The government has committed to growing its forest cover to at least 10% of Kenya’s total land area.

But one of the difficulties with this is that the main competition to using land for forest cover is agriculuture – and as we mentioned before, food secutiry is also a priority especially since population growth is high. That’s why there could be useful synergries in our LMT portfolio. For example, Kenya’s agricultural land has relatively low productivity, a fact that makes it difficult to use land for afforestation instead of agriculture. But adopting integrated soil fertility would improve the productivity of agricultural land, freeing up more space for forest cover.

If Kenya were to increase its afforestation effots this would have a number of co-benefits as well: forests provide many ecosystems services, such as increased biodiversity, provisioning of clean water and landscape diversification.