A TOTAL of 24,221,496 trees were planted in Kilimanjaro Region between 2013 and 2016, under a tree planting campaign focused on enhancing its environmental status.
This was revealed here recently by Mr
Simon Msoka, an official of the Kilimanjaro Regional Secretariat, during
a land use and climate smart agriculture workshop. The workshop was
organised by Hanns R. Neumann stiftung (HRNS) in collaboration with the
Uganda-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
“The campaign’s goal was to plant a
total 31,555,053 trees during the period but only 24,221,496, were
planted, of which 19,548,271 have survived so far,” he said. He
explained that the trees were planted in all the six districts within
the region and two forests farms – in West Kilimanjaro and in Rongai.
Mr Msoka further explained that on the
broader front, the campaign rhymed with initiatives to grapple with
global climate change challenges. He said the workshop was critical for
Kilimanjaro Region which had a total of 643,300 hectares of land
suitable for agriculture.
Speaking during the workshop, a IITA
research associate, Ms Diana Kirungi, said its target, among others, was
to map major agro-ecological land use zones in Kilimanjaro Region, to
identify major constraints, solutions and opportunities for Climate
Smart Agriculture (CSA) adaption.
The Northern Zone HRNS Coordinator, Mr
Thadeus Moshiro, said the workshop would help to identify and map the
main actors in climate smart agriculture and their roles in Kilimanjaro
Region. “This would help among other things, to develop a climate-smart
investment pathway for coffee cultivation and also to guide coffee
farmers in Kilimanjaro Region towards improved productivity and income
generation,” he said.
A facilitator from HRNS, Blaga Zlateva,
said the HRNS Project was currently working with more than 25,000 coffee
growers in Tanzania, enabling the growers to come to terms with global
climate change.
“We support coffee growers to
effectively respond to changing climatic conditions, something that
would help them increase coffee output and therefore increase their
income, and, broadly, contribute to national economic development,” she
said.
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