‘It helped me feed my six children’: how Africa’s first water fund supports farmers to protect Kenya’s biggest river

Protecting the River Tana in the Meru national park is securing the water supply to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Photograph: Hemis/Alamy Conserving the watershed of the Tana and improving farming methods is securing water supplies and livelihoods alike in a changing climate By Peter Muiruri W hen in 2017 David Nyoro became one of the first farmers to partner with Africa’s first water fund to conserve the watershed of Kenya’s biggest river, he received 180 high-value avocado seedlings. The 67-year-old’s farming methods had been dominated by annual crops that left large sections of his five-acre piece of land bare, increasing soil erosion and contributing to river sedimentation. “We used to lose a lot of topsoil to the river. Such loss of soil nutrients and poor farming practices meant we had less farm produce,” he says. The avocado seedlings enabled him to grow his farm income to close to 2m Kenyan shillings (about £11,500 at today’s exchange rates), with each mature avocado tree yielding 70kg (154lbs) annually. He introduced cover crops to improve soil health and reduce soil erosion and sediment loads. “Improving farming methods and conserving the watershed has helped me to feed and educate my six children, while those in Nairobi and others downstream can enjoy more clean water from these rivers,” he says. A decade of protecting the Tana River is securing the water supply to the capital by delivering more than 27m litres (5.9m gallons) of additional dry-season water daily, say the developers of the Upper Tana-Nairobi water fund trust . The fund has also achieved a 41% decline in turbidity (cloudiness, indicating water quality), saving urban authorities £900,000 in water-treatment costs and demonstrating how nature-based solutions can safeguard urban water systems against climate variability. The water fund was created in 2015 in a process spearheaded by the Nature Conservancy to help secure the Tana by reducing sediments flowing into key tributaries and restoring degra...