Solar pumps kept the seedlings alive through a dry January

The short rains failed this year, which on the Kenya Highlands sites used to mean standing by while a whole cohort of young trees dried out and died. January is the dangerous month, when the youngest plots have not yet sent roots deep enough to find their own water.

Two solar-powered pumps and a drip line changed that. The pumps draw from a spring-fed tank up the slope and feed a drip line laid through the plots planted most recently, putting water at the base of about 60,000 young trees.

It is not enough water to grow a forest, and we do not pretend it is. A drip line keeps a seedling alive, it does not make it thrive. The aim is narrow: get the youngest trees through a bad month until the ground has moisture of its own again.

The Kanam women's cooperative, who grew most of these seedlings, ran the watering rota. They had the strongest reason to, since survival is how their nursery is judged and paid.

We considered diesel pumps when we first costed this. They would have done the same job and then quietly bled the budget, because fuel has to be driven in over rough tracks at a price that rises every year. Out here the running cost, not the purchase price, is what kills a scheme.

The solar panels paid for themselves the first time we did not have to make that fuel run. The sun that dried the rains out is now the thing keeping the trees alive through it, which is a small mercy we will take.