Q&A: Youth led conservation, one community at a time

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Community youth conservation in Africa is growing, with young people taking an active role in safeguarding the continent’s biodiversity and natural resources. Their efforts range from community-based conservation projects, youth-led conservation organisations and educational initiatives that strengthen a culture of environmental stewardship.

• In this exclusive interview with Conservation Rising, Erick Ombija, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Ecosystem Restoration Alliance of Kenya (KERA), explains how the organisation is blending global ambition with local youth-led conservation action.

• “Differences in priorities are inevitable,” Ombija says. “Our ‘best fits’ approach means donor goals are adapted to local contexts, ensuring community voices are heard and respected while still delivering conservation results.”

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Erick Ombija is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ecosystem Restoration Alliance of Kenya (KERA)

In what ways does KERA involve the community and youth in conservation?

KERA’s work is rooted in the idea that restoration succeeds only when communities feel genuine ownership of it. At ward and county levels, co-management structures allow local people to be decision-makers in conservation. Partnerships with county governments and youth-serving organisations create a bridge between grassroots priorities and national climate strategies. Young people are central in our work as champions, managers and stewards of projects. Capacity development ensures promising local leaders are equipped with the skills and resources to drive long-term change. By aligning with government development plans, anchoring activities in responsive, place-based partnerships and ensuring communities are involved in project design and monitoring, KERA is creating models where conservation is not imposed from outside but genuinely co-owned.

What principles guide your approach to ensuring restoration is community-driven?

We ground our work on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’s ten principles, ensuring every project is both scientifically sound and socially inclusive. This approach aligns with Kenya’s development plans, the Sustainable Development Goals and international conventions on climate and biodiversity. Projects are designed through human-centred design processes, which balance ecological restoration with human wellbeing. Importantly, KERA integrates multiple knowledge systems, including Indigenous, traditional, local and scientific knowledge, to ensure interventions reflect local realities and priorities.

Measurable goals and indicators are set from the outset, allowing communities and partners to track progress and adapt strategies. Activities are always tailored to local ecological and cultural contexts, while still considering wider landscape connectivity. Monitoring begins at project inception and diverse stakeholders are involved in evaluation to encourage social learning and mutual accountability. Additionally, we work with county anchors in Siaya and Tana River, to strengthen governance frameworks that enable long-term restoration. This includes mapping relevant policies and fostering political commitment while protecting the rights and security of local stakeholders.

From your work with grassroots groups, which engagement practices have proven most successful in securing lasting buy-in?

Sustainable engagement has come from structures that ensure communities see themselves as equal partners. Co-management groups bring together county governments, local actors and inter-generational working groups to align efforts with development plans. Partnerships with youth-serving organisations have been particularly effective in extending reach and influence, as these groups already have strong community presence and legitimacy. By building the institutional capacity of local champions, KERA strengthens community ownership, while monitoring frameworks developed together with residents ensure accountability. Youth are treated as restoration managers and stewards whose perspectives are embedded in county-level plans. Responsive partnerships, informed by detailed stakeholder mapping, also ensure interventions complement existing efforts rather than duplicating them. Above all, close collaboration with county governments anchors projects within official plans, safeguarding their long-term survival.

How do you manage conflicts when community priorities differ from donor or technical goals?

Differences in priorities are inevitable. We minimised them by adopting what we call a “best fits” rather than “best practices” approach. This means that donor and technical ambitions are not simply transplanted into communities but are adapted to local contexts. Inclusive and transparent design processes ensure community voices are heard from the outset, while the strengths of local systems are harnessed rather than overridden. In practice, this approach reduces friction, as donors see their objectives realised in ways that resonate with local realities, while communities feel respected and included.

On youth led conservation, what makes youth-led approaches distinct from traditional models?

Youth-led conservation positions youth as leaders. At every stage, design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation, youth are in charge. They serve as coordinators, facilitators and project developers and they directly benefit from the outcomes of their work. This makes the model transformative, because youth bring energy, creativity and technological fluency that can generate ground-breaking solutions. Their projects often attract multi-stakeholder support, creating spaces where funders, mentors and community actors converge around youth-led initiatives. When properly resourced, these approaches conserve biodiversity, reshape community dynamics and open opportunities for inclusive development.

Many youth initiatives struggle with sustainability. How does KERA ensure long-term impact?

To overcome this challenge, KERA has adopted a three-tier operational model. At the top, the Executive Management Team provides governance and donor coordination. The Secretariat Operations Corps manages programmes, finance and learning systems, ensuring accountability and efficiency. The Field Implementation Network anchors execution at the local level, facilitating technical delivery and citizen engagement. Together, these structures mean that youth are leaders, coordinators and board directors. Youth-serving organisations are strengthened institutionally, enabling them to sustain projects long after initial support. By embedding youth in governance, management and execution, we ensures they remain at the centre of long-term community transformation.

How do you see the role of youth in Kenya’s conservation landscape over the next decade?

At present, youth participation is limited to advocacy and small-scale awareness campaigns. KERA is deliberately challenging this model. Looking ahead, we envision young people leading community-based projects of far greater ambition like restoring landscapes, regenerating soils, and delivering measurable climate action. With the right resources and platforms, youth will transition to being implementers of science-driven solutions. In the next decade, their role will expand from raising awareness to shaping Kenya’s conservation future, ensuring that biodiversity protection and climate resilience are achieved through youth-led, community-rooted action.

What are some of the most influential restoration projects that you are currently undertaking?

One of our flagship efforts is the development of Africa’s largest biochar production facility, established in partnership with the County Government of Tana River and a range of collaborators. This project is a comprehensive response to land degradation, waste management and climate resilience. By turning invasive Prosopis and other bio-wastes into biochar and biofertilisers, KERA is simultaneously addressing soil restoration, sustainable farming and carbon removal. The aim is to help smallholder farmers transition to low-carbon agricultural practices while improving food security and livelihoods. Communities are also being sensitised to large-scale forest and landscape restoration initiatives that will follow Prosopis removal. These efforts extend across activities such as reforestation, agroforestry, mangrove rehabilitation, grassland regeneration and agricultural use of restored lands. The goal is to rebuild soil health and restore vegetation cover, ensuring that land once written off as lost can support both biodiversity and human development.

Another transformative project is the Africa Generation Restoration Centre (AGRC–Kenya), located on a 500-acre site in Migori County. This centre is designed as a public-private-community platform to accelerate ecosystem restoration while promoting green economies. It combines youth-led conservation, regenerative agriculture, eco-tourism and bioeconomy innovation in a way that directly benefits local communities. The centre is projected to restore 1,500 hectares of degraded land, capture up to 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually through durable biochar, empower more than 17,000 youth and women and generate 1,600 green jobs. It also introduces a financing model that ties economic value directly to positive social and environmental outcomes, offering a replicable blueprint for sustainable development across Africa and beyond.

Field Implementation Network (FIN), a project we are also currently working on, translates national climate strategies into local action. By embedding youth-led roles within communities, FIN creates a performance-based framework for restoration. The pilot in Tana River County aims to demonstrate a model that could directly employ 1,505 young people as project managers and stewards within five years. This is a deliberate attempt to place young people at the frontline of climate action, ensuring continuity and scalability of restoration efforts across all 47 counties.