Members of the 33-participant cohort at the Centre for the Nature Economy in Laikipia during a two-week training course in restoration science. [Amos Kiarie, Standard]
Africa is slowly repositioning itself from a passive recipient of climate science to a producer of restoration knowledge, as a new training and research model in Kenya seeks to integrate indigenous ecological wisdom into global environmental and climate finance systems.
At the heart of this shift is the Natural State – Centre for the Nature Economy (CNE) in Laikipia, which is training African practitioners to participate in restoration science, carbon markets and biodiversity financing—systems that have historically excluded the communities most dependent on land and natural resources.
The Centre argues that without such inclusion, Africa risks continuing to supply critical ecosystems for global climate stability while remaining marginal in the financial systems that value and trade nature.
For decades, global climate and biodiversity decisions have largely been designed and financed outside the landscapes they aim to restore, often in institutions based in Europe and North America.
