Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, said the crises Kenya and its neighbors are now facing could be traced to logging and environmental degradation that have significantly reduced Kenya's forest cover.

"Indeed, the tragedies that this country is facing today such as drought, famine and poverty have been exacerbated by the gradual degradation of our environment -- including indigenous forests," she said in a statement.

Maathai -- who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her Green Belt Movement -- said the drought, poverty and lack of development were all worsened by deforestation.

Her group has planted some 30 million trees to counter tree-loss and desertification in Africa, championing its programs as key to development and the respect of human rights.

"Unless we fully understand the linkages between indigenous forests and these economic sectors, we shall continue to trivialise both the role that these forests play in sustainable development and the urgency with which Kenya needs to increase her indigenous forest cover," she said.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya's forest cover has shrunk from 10 percent of its 582,650 square-kilometer (224,962-square-mile) territory to a mere 1.7 percent, altering rain and catchment patterns that are essential for the country's agrarian economy.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) last week warned that 11 million people in Somalia, Kenya, Djibouti and Ethiopia are on the brink of starvation in the Horn of Africa due to the drought.

In Kenya alone, the current crisis, which President Mwai Kibaki has declared a "national disaster," has killed more than 40 people and aid agencies expect some 2.5 million others to need food aid to survive by the end of next month.

However, Maathai, Kenya's former environment deputy minister who has thus far refused to accept re-appointment for political reasons, stressed the problem was not irreversible.

"Although the current situation is dire, it can still be improved if forest conservation and restoration measures are enhanced and strictly implemented," she said.

"It is for this reason that we need to remind ourselves of our moral responsibility to protect the environment for future generations," Maathai said.

related report
Long-Term Development Key To Beating Chronic EAfrica Drought
Nairobi (AFP) Jan 09 - Long-term sustainable development assistance is key to managing and preventing natural disasters in impoverished areas like east Africa where millions are now at risk of famine from chronic drought, a senior UN official said Monday.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the UN Millenium Project that aims to halve world poverty by 2015, said donor responses to urgent appeals for aid were important but do little to reduce a country or region's dependence on such help.

"We have to find ways quickly and urgently to take action now to save the lives of people that are in imminent risk and also make longer term investnments," Sachs said here as he kicked off a six-nation tour of Africa to review progress made on achieving the so-called Millenium Development Goals (MGDs).

"Without the support for real investments ... we are not going to save people," he told reporters. "The climate vulnerability is extreme and the population pressures are great and the vulnerability is profound."

Last week, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) issued a "special alert" for the Horn of Africa, appealing for assistance for some 11 million people in Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia who it said are at the brink of starvation.

That alert followed similar warnings that famine may engulf the region as Kenyan Red Cross and local officials reported that some 45 people, mostly children, had already died from malnutrition and related illness mainly in northeastern Kenya since December.

While calling for a multi-pronged approach to addressing the drought and other disasters, Sachs lamented the slow response by donors in making good on pledges made last year to double aid to poor countries by 50 billion dollars by 2010, much of it for medium- and long-term development projects in Africa, the world's poorest continent.

"This missing aid that was promised by donors for so long but not yet delivered is really a life and death issue," he said. "The finances in Africa are extraordinarily tight, the challenges on the ground are so high and these problems cannot be solved by the countries themselves."

"The donor community has not yet empowered these communities to make investment," said Sachs, who from Kenya will travel on to Malawi, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Mali. "That is the tragedy that needs to be overcome."

He said poor African nations had already fallen well behind interim benchmarks laid out to achieve the Millenium Development Goals by the 2015 deadline.

"The MDGs are way off track all through Africa," said Sachs. "Under the current trajectory they will not be achieved."

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