A group of Kenyan teenagers was on Sunday, March 1, granted a world audience on Al Jazeera network, following their simple yet creative way to combat deforestation.
Using locally made slingshots,the young boys and girls are having a blast catapulting seedballs across the countryside.
A seedball is simply that - a seed inside of a ball of charcoal dust mixed with some nutritious binders.
They are made with charcoal dust and nutrients from acacia trees embedded with seeds.
The creative genius behind the ingenious tree planting technique is little known Kenyan organization, Seedball Kenya.
Founders Teddy Kinyanjui and Elsen Karstad decided to begin investigating the prospect of growing trees for charcoal in dryland areas.
In 2016, based on these experiments, Teddy and the team had their eureka moment, when they noticed piles of charcoal dust lying around markets throughout Kenya’s cities and then it hit them.
In the company of his team, they took a seed and placed it at the center of a marble-sized ball of charcoal dust, nutritious binders, and water to create the first biochar seedball, leading him to come up with a creative way to reverse rampant deforestation by making it easy to plant trees.
Under the traditional approach, reforestation projects rely solely on seedlings, which require extensive labour, water, and time, making biochar seedballs a truly efficient tree planting method.
At least 2 million seedballs have been pushed out from the end of a slingshot since 2017.
Using slingshots is rather ironic, as its a tool that has been used over the years to kill birds, but it has now turned into a bird-habitat-building device.
The ingenious method has helped create jobs in the charcoal industry while also ensuring that the estimated 5.6 million trees that are felled each year are balanced out fresh new seedlings.
From each newly planted tree, charcoal suppliers can cut a few branches every year.
The slingshot boys from Kenya earned their mark as pioneers in combating the negative effects of deforestation such as adverse climate change.
Trees also absorb carbon dioxide, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activity. As climate change continues, trees play an important role in the capture and storage of excess carbon dioxide.
Watch the Kenyan teens saving the world a seedball at a time below:
