Dicaprio announces grant for Kenya project
● Hollywood star’s foundation backs work of Scots university
Hollywood actor Leonardo Dicaprio is supporting the expansion of a university conservation project in Kenya.
The project, by Napier University in Edinburgh, will receive 50,000 US dollars (£37,000) in the latest a round of grants from the Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation which he announced at a conference at Yale University in Connecticut.
Mikokopamoja-‘mangroves Together’ in Swahili - involves Edinburgh-based scientists working with Kenyan villagers and researchers to protect threatened mangrove forests and fund community development.
The project in Gazi Bay, 50km south of Mombasa, won the 2017 Equator Prize by the United Nations Development Programme.
Now The Revenant and The Wolf of Wall Street actor has announced foundation funding from to try and repeat the project’s success in the Vanga Blue Forest area of the east African country.
Dicaprio’s foundation was established in 1998 with help of environmental experts and philanthropists and has gradually built an international grant-making operation.
The actor addressed a Yale climate change conference and said the foundation was 0 Clockwise from main: Children who benefited from the Mikoko Pamoja project; a man collects water from a well run by the scheme; Leonardo Dicaprio who has pledged $50,000 in support “proud to support the environmental work” of more than 100 organisations at home and abroad.
He added: “These grantees are active on the ground, protectingouroceans,forestsand endangered species for future generations - and tackling the urgent, existential challenges of climate change.”
Mangroves protect coastal communities from storms and tsunamis and are efficient natural carbon sinks, locking and storing CO2 at up to five times the rate of tropical rainforests. They also form an important habitat for fish and wildlife.
However environmental experts say they are being destroyed at an alarming rate, threatening the livelihoods of local farmers and fishermen and triggering the release of greenhouse gases.
The Mikoko Pamoja project involved Edinburgh Napier staff and students working with the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute in Gazi Bay to explore the ecological value of mangroves in helping the ecosystem recover.
The model will now be used in community projects to Vanga on Kenya’s south coast, with the grant-making body covering start-up costs.
Professor Mark Huxham, who is leading the university’s work in the area, said: “This support from the Leonardo Dicaprio Foundation will help us expand our efforts to Vanga, the largest mangrove forest in southern Kenya.”