The hills of Michimikuru are a little piece of heaven: pickers in brightly coloured scarves move slowly through the chest-high bushes of the vivid green tea-fields beneath the slopes of Mount Kenya. But as the saying goes, local colour is other people’s poverty. Just ten kilometres to either side, the desert is encroaching; the mountain’s snowcap is melting; and soaring temperatures, droughts and storms mean the crops of the country’s primary export often fail.
It’s the scene of a remarkable initiative, co-funded by the British fair-trade company Cafédirect and the German Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development, to help the 9,000 small growers of the Michimikuru Tea Company to adapt to climate change. And it’s a good indicator of the direction that businesses in many countries are going to have to take, like it or not. Because waiting for governments to agree and act may simply take too long.
As the climate change conference begins in Copenhagen, this is where Barack Obama really should be: walking the muddy village streets in his father’s native country, talking to tea-growers who also grow kale to sell for a few shillings so they can survive when their main crops fail. Perhaps then he would be happy to promote a deal for developing countries to help them survive the damage that is now widely blamed on developed countries; Kenya’s annual carbon emissions are just 0.3 tonnes per capita against 14 tonnes for the US.
The initiatives (there are similar ones in Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua) are deceptively simple. They include low-energy woodburning stoves that mean women who were having to spend up to five hours a day collecting massive bundles of wood can use just three sticks a day. That not only saves time and CO2 emissions, it cuts deforestation too. It also creates work, as locals are trained to make the stoves.
Other projects include cutting thirsty eucalyptus and replanting river banks with indigenous trees; teaching growers (some of whom have barely half an acre) to ‘double-dig’ their plots with varied crops to eat, sell and barter, and to make ‘multi- storey’ gardens, using giant sacking versions of grow bags. It means providing nurseries for tea plants; and housing Kenyan National Forest guards so they can protect the local forest. Tea factories now use energy- efficient boilers. A feasibility study for a wind farm has shown that it could not only supply the tea company’s energy needs but also sell power back to the national grid.
These things do make a material difference: switching from growing tea to passion fruit, a less climate-vulnerable crop, or simply adding in other crops such as madacamia nuts, bananas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes or arrowroot, kale and spring onions, give growers more security than depending on the traditional tea monoculture.
I spoke to people who bore this out. Tiny Veronica Kalai doesn’t know how old she is. But she was born in Michimikuru and began farming tea here 30 years ago. Now her scant two acres support eight children and 20 grandchildren. After the recent drought her harvest has fallen from 2,000kg of tea to just 800kg. But she grows vegetables as well, and her plot is neatly crisscrossed with lines of cabbages and kale, overhung by a massive avocado tree.
Sarah Kambunarah is just 15 and tends the low-energy stove in her father’s house, where he grows kale and spring onions to sell in the market. Not having to collect so much firewood in order to cook family meals gives her more time to study: she plans to be a surgeon. Former teacher and tea-grower Grace Nkatha Kobia has spent the year helping to clear 5,000 eucalyptus from the river bank and replanting indigenous trees. Her husband, retired Captain Andrew Ethuru, has a suitably military bearing and a determined manner. He has farmed tea at Michimikuru for 30 years, is a director of the Michimikuru Tea Company and is about to become a director of Cafédirect itself.
When he first bought land to plant tea all those years ago, it was cool all the time, he says. The rainfall was regular and the death rate for seedlings was low. ‘Today we lose about half of the seedlings — it’s too hot. There was no malaria; now it’s a common disease. The desert has advanced by 30 kilometres.’ In those days, he says, there was snow on Mount Kenya all year round. Nowadays, there is often none.
What would he like to see out of Copenhagen? ‘What I want to hear is those people who are responsible for climate change owning up and setting an agenda on how to change it. Africa is vulnerable — it’s where most of the poor people are.’ Esther Magambo, assistant director of agriculture and head of land use and environmental management at Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture, agrees. The Kenyan government is running a major reforestation project and is going to Copenhagen with high hopes. They are looking into expanding the Michimikuru projects. ‘We’ve got to do capacity building, empower people, train farmers and supply them with seed,’ she says.
Cafédirect, a pioneer of the fair-trade movement, is throwing down a gauntlet to big business. Chief executive Anne MacCaig says: ‘I fear that the commitments and the results in Copenhagen may not be stunning, but I do believe business will take the lead anyway if that is the case. If big business altered their profitability structures, that would have a very big impact. Business has a crucial role… because I don’t think we can wait for governments to do this; business needs to get there before government and I think it will.
‘There are so many opportunities that come with that commitment to [carbon] reduction, so many new industries that will be created and I think this project demonstrates that through a commitment to an understanding of adaptation strategies, there are now projects on the table for development in Africa.’
‘I do have a sense, having spoken to various people in ethical finance and social enterprise, that there’s an appetite for investing in more sustainable business models with patient finance — because this investment is so desperately required.’
On the plane back, I sat next to Michael French, a director of World Vision, an international Christian-based charity dedicated to community development, disaster relief and anti-poverty advocacy. ‘For us, climate change is one of the huge contextual issues,’ he told me. ‘The question is, are you campaigning and acting on climate change — or on poverty and injustice in the light of climate change?’
Like it or not, this is a battle that business will have to take up — even if it means trimming the green shoots of profitability. Britain leads the world in buying fair-trade products; perhaps its consumers will now push Tesco and its ilk to take a lead in the battle against climate change.
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