When 61-year-old Mercy Joshua was young, the vast forests of southeastern Kenya teemed with wildlife, but decades of unchecked deforestation by locals have devastated the land.

She watched forests dwindle and rivers dry up across her homeland of Kasigau - a semiarid savanna grassland dotted with shrubs, woodland and small rugged hills - as people cut down the trees to earn a meager living by selling them for firewood.

But now, after decades of degradation, a local project has found a way to preserve the forests and support the community by getting international companies to pay to plant trees.

"We were losing everything, but thanks to the project, we have learned even how to live with the wild animals," Joshua, a mother of four, told AFP.

"These days, we don't cut down trees. ... They are our friends," she added.

The project has breathed new life into Kasigau, a 200,000-hectare dryland forest 330 kilometers southeast of the capital of Nairobi that connects the two halves of Kenya's renowned Tsavo National Park.

Founded in 2009, it is part of a UN-backed carbon credit plan aimed at stopping 54 million metric ton of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere over the next 30 years, equivalent to 1.2 million tons a year.

Leading buyers of the credits include Microsoft, Barclays Bank and Kenya Airways, which have invested $3.5 million each since the project started.

These companies buy carbon credits by paying to conserve existing trees and plant new ones. The forests soak in carbon from the atmosphere, helping to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the air and so offset what the companies release themselves.

'No jobs, no water'

The Kasigau plan has also created a new source of income for impoverished local communities where most people eke out a living by hunting animals for meat or illegally producing charcoal.

"There are no jobs here, no water, and I have a family to feed," said Matthew Mutie, a 40-year-old father of three who supports his family by making charcoal for about $3 a sack.

Rob Dodson from Wildlife Works, which oversees the Kasigau project, added, "Most of the people in this area are subsistence farmers, and in most cases their crops fail due to poor rainfall."

The plan directly employs 400 people but also supports nearly 100,000 rural Kenyans in other projects, including sustainable charcoal production, tree nurseries and eco-friendly craft products.

In a deeply poor region where many people live on $1 per day, the project has had a major impact, bringing in an average of $270 per person a year - about a quarter of Kenya's GDP per capita.

"The project is a perfect example of how African countries can help in the fight against climate change, while at the same time benefiting the local communities," said Josep Gari, from the United Nations Development Programme.

Gari insists that this project is generating wealth for the community, and so provides a long-term bulwark against climate change.

Kenyan officials said the Kasigau project was helping to transform people's lives.

"Once an area is under a carbon credit scheme, the area becomes protected," said Elijah Mwandoe, a senior local government environment official.

"We tell communities if you have a tree standing, it is making our air clean, and if we have clean air, then we will all benefit and we will get rainfall."

Deforestation accounts for about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions every year, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the global transportation sector, according to Wildlife Works.

(China Daily 08/11/2014 page10)