In Africa, poverty and environmental degradation are

inextricably linked. If we want to talk about long-term

sustainable solutions, we cannot address one without the
other.
I live in an area of rural Kenya where people cut down
indigenous trees to process and sell as cooking charcoal.
Every morning, I see men riding into town on rickety
bicycles weighted down by large, overstuffed bags. These
50-kilogram sacks were once filled with food aid donated
by Western governments but are now used to transport
illegally produced charcoal into urban centers like
Mombasa and Nairobi.
Known as the local “poverty industry,” the informal
charcoal trade exacerbates East Africa’s dangerously high
levels of deforestation and threatens agricultural
livelihoods. For families living on less than $1 per day,
the immediate need for income far outweighs the long‐
term consequences of deforestation. In fact, the industry is
only growing more enticing. As Africa’s population
quickly rises and urbanization intensifies, there is a
massive and increasing demand for wood products,
making deforestation even more profitable in the short
term for the world’s poorest communities.
Rural subsistence farmers living in semi-arid regions are
among the most neglected, hardest to serve people on
Earth. Low, erratic rainfall coupled with degraded,
infertile soil presents near‐insurmountable challenges.
Because soil quality is so poor and drought so persistent,
traditional food crops often fail—forcing communities to
rely on foreign assistance and charitable organizations. As
we have seen in recent years, below-average rainfall can
push these families to the brink of starvation; many
villages in rural Kenya are still recovering from the severe
drought experienced in 2009 after four consecutive
deficient rainy seasons.
When trees disappear, biodiversity is lost at an
astonishing rate—the loss of ground cover and root
systems in these already fragile regions leads to soil
erosion and, ultimately, desertification. Out of
desperation, some farmers in these villages cut down
roughly one tree per week. That is more than 2,000 trees
destroyed over each farmer’s lifetime. Multiply this by
the millions of people throughout Africa who are forced
to make the same choice between plundering the land or
earning less than is required for survival. Through this
cycle of extreme poverty and environmental destruction,
thousands of acres of indigenous tree cover have been
lost. Farmland is becoming ever‐more infertile and natural
environments are eroding.