Each government-issued ‘Mvuvi’ card (‘mvuvi’ means ‘fisher’ in Swahili) will feature a photo and fingerprint taken directly from the card’s registered owner.

Authorities will be able to read the cards using smartphones loaded with communications software that allows short-range wireless-data transfer. Officials hope that the cards will boost security and curb illegal fishing and logging.

The Mvuvi card is debuting in Lamu County, home to what the government says are around 60 per cent of Kenya’s protected mangrove forests.

“There are people who pretend to be fishermen going out to sea but they are doing illegal logging of the mangroves,” said Samson Macharia, commissioner of Lamu County, in a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Over-harvesting of mangroves will affect [impacts from] climate change and ecosystems all along the shores of the coast and the islands,” he added.

Environmental scientists have long stressed the important role that mangrove forests play in reducing global warming threats. Mangroves are widely believed to be far more effective at absorbing and storing carbon dioxide – one of the major drivers of climate change – than trees on land.

The trees’ roots also trap and hold sediment, providing a coastal buffer against storms and protection from floods, as well as creating an important fish breeding ground.

More than 35 per cent of the world’s mangroves have already been lost and they are disappearing three to five times faster than other types of forest, according to international conservation group WWF.

Figures published by Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry show that the country lost about 20 per cent of its mangroves between 1985 and 2009. Of those that remain, an estimated 40 per cent are now degraded.

“In the mangroves, we have witnessed ‘die-back’, which is mangroves just drying up,” said John Bett, who works on sustainable forestry for WWF-Kenya. Bett said he has seen the effects of climate change in Lamu County gather pace in the last 10 to 15 years and that the rate of mangrove regeneration, which can occur naturally as seeds fall from trees onto the mud, has “slowed down dramatically”.

Only loggers registered with Kenya’s Forestry Service are allowed to cut mangroves in Lamu County, and only within certain quotas and areas, he explained. However, without officially knowing who exactly is out on the water, cracking down on illegal fishing or logginghas been a challenge.

Funded by the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Mvuvi card project originally launched in 2018, with a pilot phase that handed out 250 cards to fishermen on Kiwayu Island in Lamu County.

Those cards were eventually cancelled due to the discovery of security gaps in the system, explained Mathenge Ndungu, programme manager of the Kiunga Youth Bunge Initiative (KYBI).

This local civil society group is now in charge of finding and registering fishermen for the new card. The group is working with the government to strengthen the security of participants’ personal information and is in discussions over allocating space on the government’s servers to store that database, Ndungu said.

In the meantime, KYBI has registered 700 fishermen and hopes to issue them all with cards by the end of November.”We are targeting 1,000 fishermen to be issued with cards in the first phase,” said Ndungu.

The hope, he said, is that the Mvuvi card will succeed in protecting a fishing industry already severely stressed by the combination of climate change, poaching and mangrove loss.

Ali Tewa, 34, who comes from Kiwayu, started fishing when he left school at 16 and remembers a time when the fish were plentiful in the waters around Lamu County. “Back then, in the 1990s, you could go [out] for between half an hour and three hours to catch around 200 kg [440 pounds] of fish,” he said.”Now, you can go a whole day without catching any.”

Each government-issued ‘Mvuvi’ card (‘mvuvi’ means ‘fisher’ in Swahili) will feature a photo and fingerprint taken directly from the card’s registered owner.

Authorities will be able to read the cards using smartphones loaded with communications software that allows short-range wireless-data transfer. Officials hope that the cards will boost security and curb illegal fishing and logging.

The Mvuvi card is debuting in Lamu County, home to what the government says are around 60 per cent of Kenya’s protected mangrove forests.

“There are people who pretend to be fishermen going out to sea but they are doing illegal logging of the mangroves,” said Samson Macharia, commissioner of Lamu County, in a telephone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Over-harvesting of mangroves will affect [impacts from] climate change and ecosystems all along the shores of the coast and the islands,” he added.

Environmental scientists have long stressed the important role that mangrove forests play in reducing global warming threats. Mangroves are widely believed to be far more effective at absorbing and storing carbon dioxide – one of the major drivers of climate change – than trees on land.

The trees’ roots also trap and hold sediment, providing a coastal buffer against storms and protection from floods, as well as creating an important fish breeding ground.

More than 35 per cent of the world’s mangroves have already been lost and they are disappearing three to five times faster than other types of forest, according to international conservation group WWF.

Figures published by Kenya’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry show that the country lost about 20 per cent of its mangroves between 1985 and 2009. Of those that remain, an estimated 40 per cent are now degraded.

“In the mangroves, we have witnessed ‘die-back’, which is mangroves just drying up,” said John Bett, who works on sustainable forestry for WWF-Kenya. Bett said he has seen the effects of climate change in Lamu County gather pace in the last 10 to 15 years and that the rate of mangrove regeneration, which can occur naturally as seeds fall from trees onto the mud, has “slowed down dramatically”.

Only loggers registered with Kenya’s Forestry Service are allowed to cut mangroves in Lamu County, and only within certain quotas and areas, he explained. However, without officially knowing who exactly is out on the water, cracking down on illegal fishing or logginghas been a challenge.

Funded by the European Union and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Mvuvi card project originally launched in 2018, with a pilot phase that handed out 250 cards to fishermen on Kiwayu Island in Lamu County.

Those cards were eventually cancelled due to the discovery of security gaps in the system, explained Mathenge Ndungu, programme manager of the Kiunga Youth Bunge Initiative (KYBI).

This local civil society group is now in charge of finding and registering fishermen for the new card. The group is working with the government to strengthen the security of participants’ personal information and is in discussions over allocating space on the government’s servers to store that database, Ndungu said.

In the meantime, KYBI has registered 700 fishermen and hopes to issue them all with cards by the end of November.”We are targeting 1,000 fishermen to be issued with cards in the first phase,” said Ndungu.

The hope, he said, is that the Mvuvi card will succeed in protecting a fishing industry already severely stressed by the combination of climate change, poaching and mangrove loss.

Ali Tewa, 34, who comes from Kiwayu, started fishing when he left school at 16 and remembers a time when the fish were plentiful in the waters around Lamu County. “Back then, in the 1990s, you could go [out] for between half an hour and three hours to catch around 200 kg [440 pounds] of fish,” he said.”Now, you can go a whole day without catching any.”