natural areas, metropolises and agricultural land with water. Therefore, LIFE - Faculty of Life Sciences at University of Copenhagen - is now participating in an ambitious research initiative.

The Mau Forest in Kenya supplies a land area ten times the size of Denmark with water. The forest is by far the most important water reservoir in a country where only a tenth of the land is suitable for cultivation. Unfortunately, in just ten years, up to one third of the forest has been destroyed by uncontrolled felling. The reasons for this can be found in widespread poverty, poor local planning and management, inadequate law and order, corruption and now increasing climate change.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, including researchers from the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE) and the Facultyof Law, have therefore just started a promising partnership with the Wangari Maathai Institute of Peace and Environmental Studies at the University of Nairobi as well as the grass-roots Green Belt Movement, which has planted more than 40 million trees in Kenya. The ambition of the interdisciplinary research work is to suggest concrete solutions to the conflicts that threaten the livelihoods of the local population without destroying the natural basis for coming generations. The university partnership aims to strike a sustainable balance between the needs of the local population and the forest. These needs are, in principle, the same, but, according to the former Assistant Minister for Environment in Kenya, Professor Wangari Maathai, in their fight for survival, Kenyans have forgotten how important it is to look after